[Personal_archives] Romances of the Archive and some gaps
Maryanne Dever
Maryanne.Dever at arts.monash.edu.au
Tue Apr 22 16:15:13 EDT 2008
Hi everyone,
On the question of gaps, two thoughts. I was quite challenged in the
Greta Garbo papers with what to do with suggestions that the more
revealing letters had been destroyed. That's a position I would
normally be open to, precisely because it is a more familiar scenario.
But it seemed to me looking at the papers that -- as I outline in my
essay -- there was a particular obsessive relationship between de
Acosta and paper traces of Garbo which -- together with her letter
saying she could never have destroyed that particular correspondence --
made me move away from that position to one that endeavoured
to 'read' the paper rather than the text of individual letters. I was
intrigued by Mieke Bal's point in her essay ‘Telling Objects: A
Narrative Perspective on Collecting' where she writes "that verbal
texts are not the only objects capable of conveying narrative". (That
essay is in John Elsner and Roger Cardinal, eds. "The Cultures of
Collecting". Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1994, 97-115.) I'm interested in these questions around the
materiality of archival sources and would like to take that up here
too.
The second point on the fragmentary is a practical one and relates to
experiences I have had on several occasions where an item that
is 'missing' from one collection appears in another. I'm not talking
about incorrectly filed items; I'm talking about instances where
papers have been separated and then archived in different collections.
For example, Australian writer Marjorie Barnard has a number of
typesecripts of the lectures she co-authored with her collaborator,
Flora Eldershaw, in her papers. When I visited Flora's surviving
brother he showed me a pile of typescripts which were pretty much all
the ones missing from the Barnard papers. They all ended up in the
same library but are not in fact together there. In another instance,
Barnard's final letter to her former lover, Frank Davison, is in his
papers, but his reply to her is in fact in the papers of his
biographer as Barnard had later sent it to him. While they are in the
same library (the NLA) reseacher after research
er has to join these dots themselves: there's nothing in the finding
aids: nor has anyone considered cataloguing them together. I'm curious
to know what approaches there are to these types of issues.
I think the literary references are great! Have people seen Suzanne
Keen's study, "Romances of the Archive in Contemporary British
Fiction" (U of Toronto, 2001). She does a lovely job of tracking
representations of archives and archival research from Spenser through
to more familiar contemporary fictions such as "Possession". Chapter
two on the key features of 'romances of the archive' is a real
pleasure to read. I rather like the point Keen makes (in a section of
that chapter entitled "Pleasures")in that chapter about how
researchers in fiction are rewarded with 'many pleasures'. Writing
of "Possession", she notes how Maud and Roland are rewarded with "Beds
with clean white sheets, warm baths and sea-water showers, excellent
meals at home and abroad, beautiful scenery, warm weather, and
intriguing jewellery [which] provide the sensual counterparts to the
intellectual conversations". She continues, "While it may in many
cases be true, as Richard Marius effuses, that '[h]isto
rians who have worked in the archives...experience a pleasure that can
hardly be described', more easily rendered and readily apprehended
delights always accompany the scholarly thrills in romances of the
archive". (p45).
It makes a nice contrast to Canadian historian Ruth Roach Pierson's
recent account (Queen's Quarterly 114/4 Winter 2007) of her work in
what was then the Public Archives in Ottawa in 1978 where she
writes: "Certainly reading the microfiche put a strain on my eyes. But
much worse was the strain I put on my neck. Hour after hour I sat with
my body facing the typewriter, my head turned 90 degrees to the left
to read the microfiche screen. At night, back home in my hotel
apartment, I, in an almost comatose state, would collapse into the one
upholstered chair, lean back against a heating pad on my aching neck,
a glass of wine in one hand. It was as though I had put myself under
the power of a sadistic father confessor who had, for my sins,
prescribed a set of severely self-punishing practices. Archival
research as penance" (pp494-5). This whole essay is a great one also
for the ways in which it reveals some of the often invisible
connections between 'personal drama and published
research', as Pierson notes.
I see Catherine and Sylvia have sent another post: I'll respond
further on that one.
Cheers,
Maryanne
Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever
Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research, Monash University,
Melbourne
President, Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA)
Visiting Scholar, McGill Center for Research and Teaching on Women
(MCRTW), Apr-Jun 2008
Bank of Montreal Visiting Scholar in Women's Studies
University of Ottawa, Jan-Mar 2008
Mailing Address:
Centre for Women's Studies & Gender Research
School of Political & Social Inquiry
Faculty of Arts
Monash University
Victoria 3800 AUSTRALIA
Tel. 61 3 99053259
Fax. 61 3 99052410
http://arts.monash.edu.au/womens-studies/
----- Original Message -----
From: Hobbs Catherine <catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca>
Date: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 11:04 pm
Subject: [Personal_archives] FW: Re: 'the fragmentary, shifting ice
floe'
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> Good morning,
>
> For my part, I agree with du Bois' propositions which you've
> outlined and think that this approach is very transferrable to the
> archivist. From this perspective, archivists need to foreground
> the facts that the fonds which survives is fragmentary. This
> means including details in archival appraisal and description
> about the decisions and forces which made the fonds fragmentary in
> the first place.
>
> For my part, I do spend time asking creative writers if there was
> a time when they made a decision not to create documents or
> decided to destroy documents, or when moving house or moving a job
> (or a break in in their car) meant that part of their records were
> lost. It seems to me that archivists are understanding of this
> when it comes to judging the rarety of what survives but they
> don't transfer this part of the story to the researcher through
> archival description all that often. I guess there is also the
> next layer where part of the story becomes the creator's
> relationship to what was lost. Was the fragmenting a decision to
> act (such as a bonfire which has never been regretted) or is the
> creator mourning the loss of certain documents because they relate
> to an earlier self and take on an ideal form? These additional
> elements can help us to see the psychology of the documentor and
> hence better reveal the fonds.
>
> Of course, as the ability to "read fragmentarily" suggests, we
> need to be clear that there are gaps even when there is no clue to
> their context.
>
> (The Sylvia Plath example reminds me of the novel Swann by Carol
> Shields, black comedy where the scholars are ransacking the
> fragmentary archives of a murdered (in fact dismembered) poet
> whose ouevre was naive or possibly completely talentless--sorry,
> the literary references keep coming).
>
> Other thoughts on the practical aspects of this or reflections on
> particular archival fonds?
>
> Catherine
>
> Catherine Hobbs,
> Archivist, Literary Archives (English-language)
> Library and Archives Canada
> WS 598, 550 Blvd de la Cité
> Gatineau, QC, K1A 0N4
>
> Tel: (819) 934-8331 Fax: (819) 934-8333
> e-mail: catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu
> [mailto:personal_archives-bounces at mailman.yale.edu] On Behalf Of
> Maryanne Dever
> Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 7:16 PM
> To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> Subject: [Personal_archives] Re: 'the fragmentary, shifting ice floe'
>
> Hi everyone,
>
> Hello. Thanks for the opportunity to participate in this. I'm
> really looking forward to the discussion over the week.
>
> So, how to approach 'the fragmentary, shifting ice floe'? And how
> to live with ambiguity?
>
> On this question I've been really intrigued by the work of
> classics scholar, Page duBois, which I've found quite productive
> when pondering this. I thinking here of her book 'Sappho is
> Burning' (University of Chicago Press, 1995). While those of us
> who work on contemporary literary subjects and their personal
> papers might be able to avoid confronting the question of the
> fragmentary nature of the material we find in the archives, as a
> classical scholar working with the fragments of ancient texts
> (such as surviving portions of Sappho's lyric poems), duBois has
> no choice but to address the question pretty much head-on. This is
> why I find her work so refreshing.
>
> She writes of how our attention to the artefacts of the past is
> inevitably shaped by a desire that is precisely 'a longing for
> what we cannot have' (p.33). DuBois is more than familiar with
> the epistemological challenges routinely thrown up by contending
> with 'broken things', those 'bits of the past assembled for our
> gaze through random events and destruction and discovery' (p. 31).
> (This is a little bit like what Jacqueline Rose talks about in her
> book 'The Haunting of Sylvia Plath' where -- drawing on
> psychoanalytic frameworks -- she characterizes Plath's archive in
> particular - as the 'corps morcele' or body-in-bits-and-pieces --
> as opposed to the fantasy of corporeal unity. Rose is interested,
> in the same way as DuBois I think, in how to contend with an
> archive that is 'scattered and broken'.)
>
> du Bois highlights the extent to which researchers involved in
> various kinds of archival work consciously and unconsciously
> understand themselves as agents of recovery and reconstitution,
> despite the impossibility of such projects in the face of 'what is
> in fact irrevocably lost'. She contends that we ought to examine
> more closely our insistent drive to 'mend' the past, to make it
> 'whole' in the face of its fragmented and dismembered material
> legacy. DuBois suggests that what we need to do is to hold that
> 'dream of wholeness' in tension with our recognition of what is
> irretrievable.
>
> What I take from duBois is that the skill we have to learn is to
> how to 'read fragmentarily'. I think this links to the question
> of 'ambiguity' or perhaps to 'contingency'. As literary/historical
> researchers we have to realize that when we build a narrative from
> the assembled fragments in an archive, for all that we have
> invested in the idea of ourselves as playing a restorative role,
> we are essentially putting pieces together to tell our stories,
> not accessing some fully-formed story that lies there waiting for
> us. In short, the fragments gain their evidentiary status - their
> seeming significance and seeming coherence - primarily from the
> ways in which they are incorporated into our stories. The
> challenge as I see it is how to make that contingent element
> manifest in what I write.
>
> I'll start with that for now and come back to those other elements
> (the role of chance and the self-censorship and role playing of
> the creator question) next.
>
> Cheers,
> Maryanne
>
> --
> Assoc. Prof. Maryanne Dever
> Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research, Monash University,
> Melbourne President, Australian Women's and Gender Studies
> Association (AWGSA)
>
> Visiting Scholar, McGill Center for Research and Teaching on Women
> (MCRTW), Apr-Jun 2008
>
> Bank of Montreal Visiting Scholar in Women's Studies University of
> Ottawa, Jan-Mar 2008
>
> Mailing Address:
> Centre for Women's Studies & Gender Research School of Political &
> Social Inquiry Faculty of Arts Monash University Victoria 3800
> AUSTRALIA
> Tel. 61 3 99053259
> Fax. 61 3 99052410
> http://arts.monash.edu.au/womens-studies/
>
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Hobbs Catherine <catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca>
> Date: Monday, April 21, 2008 10:55 pm
> Subject: [Personal_archives] Welcome to our SISPA discussion
> To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
>
> > Good morning,
> >
> >
> > I am very pleased to welcome Maryanne Dever (of Monash
> University) to
> > the personal archives listserv. Today is the beginning of a
> weeklong
> > open discussion of issues arising from our reading of her
> articles. I
> > hope many questions and examples from our own work have come to
> mind
> > and
> > that these can be bandied about this week. (Just a reminder to
> > participants to send replies and questions to the entire list
> and not
> > just the last speaker).
> >
> >
> > So to begin the discussion...
> > Maryanne, it's wonderful to have you with us. Thank you for
> agreeing
> > to participate. I was a real pleasure to reread your articles
> in
> > preparation for this, particularly because you have such a way
> of
> > enticing the reader with vivid examples in combination with
> > well-informed interpretation and criticism of existing assumptions
> how
> > we approach archives.
> >
> >
> > One of the most important themes arising in both articles, and a
> good
> > place to start I think, is the idea of the "fissured archive"
> that is
> > that the archival fonds which is brought into the archives is
> (as you
> > put it) like a fishnet... threads "held taut over pockets of
> > nothingness". That the personal life is always, inevitably more
> than
> > the sum of the remains and inevitably ineffable.
> >
> >
> > As Carol Shields put it in her novel Small Ceremonies, "So much
> of a
> > man's life is lived inside his own head, that it is impossible
> to
> > encompass a personality. There is never enough
> material.
> > Sometimes I read in the newspaper that some university or
> library has
> > bought hundreds and hundreds of boxes of letters and papers
> connected
> > with some famous deceased person, and I know every time that it's
> > nevergoing to be enough, its hopeless, so why even try?"
> > (Couldn't resist one of my favourite quotes!)
> >
> >
> > There are other aspects which you discuss to show how this
> fissured
> > archives is further complicated such as the role of chance and
> the
> > self-censorship and role playing of the creator.
> >
> >
> > So how do you think that you as a scholar interpreting archives
> and we
> > as archivists should approach this fragmentary, shifting ice floe?
> > I
> > wonder if you could comment further on how to 'live with
> ambiguity' ?
> >
> >
> > Catherine
> >
> >
> > (SISPA Chair)
> >
> _______________________________________________
> Personal_archives mailing list
> Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> http://mailman.yale.edu/mailman/listinfo/personal_archives
>
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