[Personal_archives] FW: Archivists, ethics, privacy and the everyday
Hobbs Catherine
catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca
Thu Apr 24 16:27:32 EDT 2008
A few points to add to this:
Thinking about what goes on behind the scenes from the archival perspective: I do think that there is a certain amount of fear among archivists of interpreting the records/combined with a sense that we want our decisions determinations to be somehow secret (I don't feel this way, but I get the sense that there is a professional "shying away"). This exists even though we are very implicated in the interpretation of the fonds when doing appraisal and arrangement and description and despite the fact that theorists like Barbara Craig are counselling us to make our decisions about appraisal accessible to researchers. I think interpretation can be done responsibly when we are in contact (as we so often are now) with the creator of the records. Or at least we should try to recover what we can about the context of the creation and use of the records and make it as plain as possible within description.
For some ideas on how the method of acquisition and restrictions placed on the fonds have shaped the understanding of Alice Munro, see Reading In Alice Munro's Archives by JoAnn McCaig (Wifrid Laurier).
As Maryanne's recent message points to, it is not just decisions about what to acquire and how to describe it but also decisions about physical rearrangement which impact here and I don't see a lot of transparency about arrangement in archival description (which speaks to your example of the depressed creator Maryanne and the removal of the de Acosta envelopes). I think this is a symptom of a larger problem where personal archives has lacked a sufficient body of theory to theorize the differences from the fonds of organizations and allow for different approaches.
Picking up on Sara's question as to whether or not people start to change their record-keeping once they recognize themselves to be public figures: In my experience, once their career is firmly established many writers do start to think of themselves "professionally" and modify their language (at least in the more "professional" areas of their fonds such as professional correspondence). It is difficult, though, to separate out a few elements here: is this professional attitude and language as a result of their stature or a result of a change in their profession (for example, the "scene" for writers in Canada 40 years ago was markedly un-professionalized and is now very much so)? The decision to "spruce up" their record-keeping probably follows from these two intertwined developments (of the individual and of the profession).
If the other question underlying this is, "once the creator has placed material with an archives does that change his/her recordkeeping?": for me that is also a difficult one to tease out (in part because the development of archival theory and practice in Canada was professionalized at roughly the same rate as the writerly professions). I can see cases where the fact that an earlier accession of a fonds was placed with an archives (or that the creator predicted its placement), there was a decision made to hold back or destroy documents, or sometimes the creator asks if they should rearrange an original order to suit the previous accession (agh!). This, of course, is where the archivist's role is to educate the creator or donor as to the importance of original order and the possibility of restricting material (not as a means just to keep something "under raps" but to preserve the material for the longterm). It would be very difficult to establish what role the archives had to play in self-censorship in future accessions (though I tend to believe that creators continue to live their lives and not alter their modes of expression so much as they look after the fact of creation at the possibility of controlling access to their material through the methods mentioned.
Often the alternative of bringing something in under restriction is a threat destruction or letting it languish detatched from the rest of the fonds (and in less than ideal storage conditions). Sorry, "archival interlopers" but if something is vitally important to understanding an individual and is placed under a restriction that prohibits current research, to my mind at least it is being preserved in its context in the fonds with a provision for access in the future. I guess this is in some sense where the "role of futurity in archival logistics" comes into play.
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: Thursday, April 24, 2008 11:42 AM
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Archivists, ethics, privacy and the everyday
HI Everyone,
Wow! I think those are really juicy issues! I love it! I'm responding here initiallly to points from Amy, Robert and Heather in the first instance. More to follow
I think that - given how much critical attention is being given to 'going backstage in the archives' as Antoinette Burton says - it is inevitable that the role of the archivist should also come under some kind of scrutiny. I rather like Martha Cooley's novel "The Archivist"
for its take on this subject.
Mike Featherstone in his essay 'Archive' talks of how it is both archivists and researchers who together -- in working with papers -- 'create the maps and record the journeys into the archive that produce the images we have of the possibilities of the material'.
[Mike Featherstone, 'Archive', Theory, Culture and Society 23: 2-3 (2006)]. I guess it would be interesting for me as a researcher to have more access to exactly what happens once a collection reaches an institution. I've certainly worked on papers that were initially fairly 'untouched' and then were more systematically ordered after a period of some years -- and the effect on how I saw that collection was quite dramatic. The individual involved suffered from a series of nervous breakdowns and the chaos I originally saw in the papers seemed to mirror this. Once they were tidied and reordered, 'she' suddenly looked different too. Similarly, I worked on the papers of the Fellowship of Australian writers at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. They were just unsorted boxes but several of us were working on them and I would come back and find the material in a particularly box been up-ended and -- apart from practical horrors at not being able to find particular items again readily -- the new conjunctions of material meant that the reading experience kept changing.
I was trying to enumerate the various layers involved here in the introduction to our forthcoming co-authored book, "The Intimate Archive". In thinking about how a collection is shaped before researchers enter the picture, I was figuring on the following: It is shaped initially by the original donor (who may or may not be the
creator) through their choice of the materials to be lodged with a particular institution. And as you noted, donors get to exercise the prerogative of property (and we can think here of Ted Hughes'
destruction of Sylvia Plath's final diaries). I was reading an essay at the weekend on collecting where the point was made about the transition from private to public hands and how the meanings that attach to objects 'shift when they enter a collection because collections produce knowledge in particular ways...the object also gains the status of being worthy of collection and enters into relationships with items in that collection'. [Josephine Mills, 'Modus Operandi' in Josephine Mills and Nancy Tousley, "On Collecting".
Lethbridge, Alberta: University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2004, pp. 9- 14.] Donated materials are then obviously shaped by archivists in the course of ordering and cataloguing the material. Then an individual collection may also be subject to restrictions (put in place, for example, by creators, donors or copyright holders) which limit reader access to all or part of a collection, again implicitly re-shaping the publicly available archive. The sheer fragility of particular items can place certain elements of an individual collection beyond the reach of readers too. What else would be in that list?
I think those are really interesting comments on the privacy question:
I've been conscious in the various papers I've looked at that I was seeing personal documents that the individuals who created them were not aware were preserved in this manner. Garbo almost certainly would not have wanted those letters available. And you probably noticed I didn't quote directly from any: that is because the Estate doesn't give permission for them to be quoted in print. I made a routine request and didn't even get a reply. Each set of correspondence within the de Acosta papers was closed until 10 yrs after the death of the individual concerned. I also worked as a research assistant on a large set of papers that were donated by a prominent (living) Australian author who had donated 'whatever was in the attic'. The papers went first to the office of an academic who was writing a biography (I was the RA) and were then headed for the National Library. I found a set of quite anguished letters from the writer's first wife (about child support payments etc) that the author probably had forgotten - they didn't paint him in a flattering light so I'm assuming that he hadn't actively preserved them for posterity -- and which the former wife would have been mortified to have realized were preserved in a public collection. This kind of relates to the point about ethics as well. In this instance I drew these letters to the attention of the manuscript librarian when the papers were leaving the university for the Nat. Library (obviously they would have found them anyway) and suggested they might get back in touch with the author -- who hadn't requested any restrictions -- and see what they might do. But I think that question of ethics is a live one and especially for those who didn't make the decision to have their papers preserved in that way. (I remember the protagonist in "The Archivist" wonders why 'the writer's hunger for privacy [is] always less compelling than the re ader's appetite - voracious, insatiable - for more words?' (p.322) And I'm fascinated by the very fine line that sometimes separates legitimate scholarly intent from plain old voyeurism.)
Thanks, Rob, for your comments on the Garbo paper. I think the point you make about *when* couples write -- ie when they are apart -- is such an obvious but often overlooked one. Margaret Harris' edition of the letters between novelist Christina Stead and her husband, Bill Blake, is a nice example of this. They were together for decades and apart at quite specific points in those years and those are the letters we have. Often they are anxious letters -- about money, for example, as it was often the prospect of well paid work that would take one or other away -- but sometimes it is the swapping of quite banal detail that is in fact the mark of their intimacy. I'm quite taken by collections of letters that fail to deliver what we first expect or want them to because that becomes for me the moment to start unpacking what my expectations were and how they shaped my reading of the correspondence. I make the point in a section of 'The Intimate Archive' where I don't find love lett ers in any conventional sense between Barnard and Davison that we have plenty of ways to talk about that seemingly revelatory moment when one stumbles upon a piece that appears to resolve the puzzle -- but we tend to lack a suitable language to frame the concept of archival 'failure', let alone ways to think about whether the archive 'failed' me or I had failed it (in the assumptions and expectations that I brought to it). We don't feel duly rewarded by the everyday, I suspect, when that is what we find.
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: Thursday, April 24, 2008 5:19 am
Subject: [Personal_archives] FW: Singular moments and some destruction
To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> Hi Everyone,
> To pick up on the discussion of the past day (I've really enjoyed
> "listening" to everyone):
>
> I have two examples of the material evidence of co-habitation and
> reuse of archival material within a couple(with a more positive spin
> than the Plath example). The element of this which interests me is
> not so much that one poet is taking the work of another and scribbling
> on the back of it (I love the idea of "writing on the backside" by the
> way) but that this really is the material evidence of their
> co-habitation and the closeness of their life together. I am working
> on the fonds of poets Roo Borson and Kim Maltman right now: two
> collaborators. There is the same phenomena of one writing on the back
> of another's drafts. In their case it is not evidence of one poetic
> mind erasing another's work but, in fact, the premium placed on paper
> within the household. Theirs is a household where paper is constantly
> being reused. They are each so much in the habit that the blank
> bottom halves of printed off emails are still commandeered for reuse.
> What does it tell you about them (other than the environmental and
> wealth-related aspects?), well, that each had access to the detritus
> of the other from very early on in their personal relationship (in the
> the mid- 1970's). It tells you something of the closeness of their
> relationship and their generosity toward one another with respect to
> their poetry (equally evident in the commentary that each provided the
> other). I think that the use of Via Rail paper in the fonds of writer
> Gail Scott is also evidence of something similar when we consider her
> former lover Erin Mouré worked at Via.
>
> Websites present a very different challenge in regard to third party
> information and personal letters, particularly when you have
> institutions assuming that all the archives will (naturally) be
> digitized. It is only those who contribute their archives after the
> advent of the web who are even aware of the possibility of such
> wideranging broadcast and sharing of their sentiments. A letter may
> not be under closure and be open to researchers on site but the
> intention of the donor was never to make it simultaneously available
> to the world at large with a click of the mouse.
>
> Amy: I thought that this was a very important comment, "I tend to
> think that this is the crux of personal archives: that they resemble
> creative works" (I am reminded of Anne Benichou's paper given at the
> Taking a Stand Conference about the archives of Melvin Cherney where
> the archives were seen as a critical and artistic practice). It gets
> at a few issues for me: first that there is a freedom of the creator
> in the intention to create, and in the creation and keeping of
> documents that can allow different meanings and different modes of
> expression. One of the reasons why I liked Maryanne's discussion of
> the "fort-da" dynamic with Garbo calling de Acosta to her and sending
> her away in order to reinforce the dynamic of their relationship is
> that it tells us that archives are performative and that the dynamic
> of the archives can mimic aspects of the creator's psychology. How do
> we see that the creation and dissemination of archives are creative
> acts and are also acts to construct self and relationships?
>
> On the side of working practice: Maryanne, there are ways in which
> archival description allows archivists to describe links between fonds
> both within the same institution and to those at another institutions.
> I rarely see this done, your example of Marjorie Barnard and Flora
> Eldershaw shows us the importance of doing so.
>
> Looking forward to more.
>
> 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: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:04 PM
> To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] Singular moments and some
destruction
>
> 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
> 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: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 4:14 am
> Subject: [Personal_archives] FW: FW: Re: 'the fragmentary,
> shifting ice floe'
> To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
>
> > Aha! That's a strong draw from my perspective as well...
> ...what
> > does "material literacy" as Maryanne and others (like Ala
> Rekrut)
> > call it indicate about state of mind? Are we not a forensic
> > profession in a very strong sense? Can we not look for motive
> and
> > the state of mind of the documentor at the particular moment in
> > time... (when the clues are there)?
> >
> > I am reminded of a wonderful group of letters held here between
> > novelist Elizabeth Smart and her friend Didy Asquith. The
> letters
> > are in pencil, written hastily in pages torn from small
> notebooks
> > while ES was looking after her three young children on a farm in
> > Ireland. The letters contain many references to her poverty (having
> > to feed her children on boiled nettles, for example) and her lover
> > George Barker's repeated visits (one where he racks up an immense
> > bar bill at the local pub which ES has no hope of paying off). The
> > content is important to understanding her psychology but it is made
> > ever more present and ever more momentary when you notice the
> > crescent shaped finger nail holes which ES has made along the side
> > of a number of the sheets.
> >
> > I love the fact that you situate the creator at a particular moment
> > in his/her present.
> >
> > 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
> >
> >
> >
> > ________________________________
> >
> > From: SYLVIA LASSAM [mailto:sylvialassam at rogers.com]
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 1:56 PM
> > To: Hobbs Catherine
> > Subject: Re: [Personal_archives] FW: Re: 'the fragmentary, shifting
> > ice floe'
> >
> >
> > Good afternoon,
> >
> > One of two things have occured to me while reading the comments from
> > Catherine and Maryanne. Not only is our documentation fragmentary,
> > but our sense of a letter-writer's persona is reflective of a very
> > particular place and time, of which we may know nothing. The moment
> > a specific letter was written is dependant on so many things,
> > including the writer's mood, the swirl of activity surrounding them
> > (or not), important events
> they
> > may assume their reader is aware of... There's a real danger, I
> > think, that archivists and researchers may extrapolate too much, and
> > make too many assumptions, from any one surviving letter.
> >
> > On a practical note, as a way to help researchers contextualize the
> > document, we might want to consider a description of the physical
> > object if it throws any light on the contents of the letter,
> > especially if we can compare it to others. Was it
> written
> > in haste, carefully typed on nice stationery, can the envelope tell
> > us of a temporary re-location? In other words, the
> physical
> > presentation may give us clues to the writer's state of mind and/or
> > frame the recipient's initial reaction.
> >
> > I'm enjoying this immensely so far.
> >
> > Sylvia Lassam
> > Archives of Ontario
> >
> > ----- Original Message ----
> > From: Hobbs Catherine <catherine.hobbs at lac-bac.gc.ca>
> > To: Personal_archives at mailman.yale.edu
> > Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 9:03:27 AM
> > Subject: [Personal_archives] FW: Re: 'the fragmentary, shifting ice
> > floe'
> >
> > 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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>
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