[Personal_archives] Singular moments and some destruction

[Rodney Carter]

Hello Maryanne & group,

Thank you so much for your thought-provoking discussion so far. There are a
number of threads that could be picked up and followed

On Plath's writing on the back of Hughes' manuscripts, I am reminded of
David Greetham's "poetics of exclusion" where he states that actions which
try to suppress a group can inadvertently - and ironically - allow material
traces to survive and be found. Through her attempts to efface and overwrite
Hughes, Plath, ultimately, allows his work to be saved along with hers.
Geetham talks about how it is often rubbish (such as pottery shards thrown
in garbage piles) that are found centuries later by archaeologists and it
also brings to mind the Archimedes Palimpsest, where two previously unknown
treatises - which were scrapped off the parchment and written over with
prayers and then later was illuminated "medieval" paintings by a 20th
century forger - were discovered through high-tech scanning. Leaving the
historical record up to fate is certainly not something I would encourage,
but it is definitely wonderful to see that some things do survive because of
a happy accident.
[see David Greetham, "'Who's In, Who's Out': The Cultural Poetics of
Archival Exclusion," Studies in the Literary Imagination, vol. 32, no. 1
(Spring 1999)].

The mention of Plath/Hughes, your discussion of Barnard's anxiety regarding
the knowledge that her correspondents were keeping her letters (even, if as
you state, this wasn't actually the case), and reading the articles shared
with the group, brings me to something I've been thinking about for a while
without finding any clear guide or ever coming to any hard and fast
conclusions about (if such a thing is even possible) and that is the ethics
of archival acquisition. Certainly the need to respect personal privacy is
mentioned in professional codes of conduct but it is the application which
is tricky.

Maryanne, you've written in "Reading Other People's Mail", that we live in
an "age of disclosure" but that other generations, and not everyone now,
shares the feeling that their personal records be open to all - de Costa's
exclusion of the 'vulgar people', for example. I guess, what I've been
struggling with is the balance between respecting the real - or, in the case
of executors, often perceived - wishes of creators and the 'greater good' of
preservation. It is easy to say that Max Brod did the right thing by
disregarding Kafka's wish to destroy his writings or that the Public
Archives of Canada was in the right to keep King's diaries (after all, he
passed away before he got around to stating which parts he wanted saved and
which he wanted destroyed) - and we might easily say that Hughes did the
world a great disservice by destroying Plath's diary - but generally the
considerations are much more subtle. What of the papers of those who are not
literary giants, politicians, or otherwise among 'the great and the good.'
The ethics of dealing with the "ordinary" people - when archives are lucky
enough to get them - seem much less clear cut (which is not to say that the
decision to keep or destroy in the above instances were made easily).

Dealing with personal and private correspondence, diaries, and other
material is complicated by accruals that contain correspondence received by
a donor who has little concern them self about the personal information
contained in their papers but 3rd party author of the correspondence might
not feel the same way. You quote Barnard stating that the information she
conveyed in a letter was "not a thing to remember" but it was ultimately
saved and remembered.

The committing to paper and sharing of memories is an act of trust.
Confidence is placed in the recipient to be discrete, to maintain the
author's privacy, and they may even include instructs to destroy the
letters. Once the letter leaves the author's hands, though, they lose
control over the content and its fate. If the letters are entrusted to a
confidant is the author giving over the control of the information? Have
they effectively assigned the rights to the letter to the recipient to keep
safe, destroy, or deposit in the archives as they see fit? What about those
recipients who had every intention of destroying their records but whose
untimely death prevented them from getting around to it (and who, like
artist Isabel McLaughlin, didn't have a housekeeper who was up to the task
of destroying their private papers following their death)?.

As an archivist or scholar, does the right to privacy trump the 'right to
know' (or vice versa)?. If so, does it do so in all cases, or just in some.
Where do we draw the line, assuming the material is in our hands? Certainly,
I believe and hope that we desire to preserve and provide access for some
greater good, to aid in the understanding of the individuals and the world
in which they live; that are interests are not salacious or vulgar, but we
cannot guarantee it.

Is there, or does there need to be, an archival ethics - both for archivists
and those who use archives - and how do we go about developing it?

In case anyone gets the wrong idea, I naturally have a very real concern and
do respect personal information in my professional capacity as archivist. I
deal with orphanage records and medical information and treat these
documents with the utmost sensitivity. Some cases seem clear cut but it is
the grey areas that interest me and how the idea of what is sensitive
information changes over time and across different territories and how this
might impact our decisions to keep, destroy, or limit access.

I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this, Maryanne, as a scholar who has
used and though about the use of personal records and any thoughts or
experiences the group might like to share.

All the best,
Rodney Carter


Archivist
St. Joseph Region Archives
Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:04 PM, Maryanne Dever <
Maryanne.Dever at arts.monash.edu.au> wrote:

> I think Sylvia's point is a really important one and it comes up
> frequently in literary studies – but maybe isn't commented on very
> much. I'm thinking here of the way a particular sentiment expressed in
> a single archived letter will be quoted as though it represented a
> enduring life philosophy rather than, as you say, something expressed
> in the moment! The example that has troubled me is another Barnard
> one. Barnard maintained a correspondence for decades with critic
> Nettie Palmer and when in 1935 she learned from Nettie that she was
> keeping her letters, Barnard responded thus: "By the way what
> possessed you to tell me that you kept my letters? It was enough to
> scuttle me as a correspondent". This line is quoted frequently to
> suggest that Barnard had a "life long" anxiety about her letters being
> preserved which simply isn't so. She learned in the 1940s that Palmer
> was quoting from them in a published selection of her journals and was
> evidently quite chuffed. She was also cons
> ulted about the transfer of her letters to the National Library as
> part of the Palmers' papers and she not only appears to have agreed
> but later drew people's attention to them.
>
> On the conditions under which letters are sometimes written (and how
> this affects handwriting, choice of stationery etc) I always like this
> description Barnard gives of her letter-writing habits:
>
> At one o'clock in the morning I'm liable to say anything. I'm writing
> in bed, the lamp carefully draped with a dark blue slip so that my
> family shall not see it and come to reproach me for getting a little
> more out of the day than they think proper. A devious creature but I
> must milk the night if I'm to get any time to myself.
> Marjorie Barnard to Nettie Palmer, 30 March 1939.
>
> Barnard was 41 years old at this point! Her worst handwriting is when
> she is writing on the morning ferry.
>
>
> On the question of destruction/survival and material literacy, there
> is a very interesting essay by Lynda K. Bundtzen, 'Poetic Arson and
> Sylvia Plath's "Burning the Letters"' which I've just found. She talks
> about how 'acts of textual violence or abuse [destruction of each
> other's work/papers] …were…habitual in the Plath-Hughes marriage.' She
> then talks about how when Smith College rare books collction purchased
> some of Plath's papers they also received parts of Hughes' papers
> because Plath had written her work on discarded of Hughes'. Bundtzen
> writes: "Many of her final poems are written on his backside, so to
> speak: Plath recycles old manuscripts and typescripts by Hughes, and
> often she seems to be back talking, having the last word in an
> argument. The friction between these two bodies is palpable at times,
> as text clashes with text, and one intuits Plath's purposeful coercion
> and filleting of Hughes's poems and plays as she composes … If
> Plath's "rare" body is skillfully
> re-membered for public viewing and scholarly dissection, Hughes' seems
> at times hopelessly dismembered, scattered and disordered. Her words
> are on top and one peeks at the other side, often finding her ink has
> bled through, indelibly splotching and staining Hughes' work'.
>
> (That essay is in Anita Helle, ed. "The Unravelling Archive: Essays on
> Sylvia Plath". Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press, 2007, pp.236-53.)
>
>
> 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 A
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