Essay-in-lieu-of-exam - Q5. Archives
Here is the link to my essay (recorded via Soundcloud):
https://soundcloud.com/z3461972/z3461972-archives
And for further reference, here is the transcript to my audio response to the question.
Transcript:
Intrinsic to human civilisation is the inherent desire and need to preserve what is valuable to society. This is particularly important when it comes to intangible human activity, which is hard to preserve. We tend to materialise what we cannot preserve and archive them to retain their existence. As a product of this human condition to preserve, archives are thus, a collection of both individual and collective memories of human experience. They are the materialistic form of the ideas and images of the past (Ibrahim 2009, p. 65).
Archive fever encapsulates this innate human desire, by recognising that in order to preserve what we value for as long as we can, we need to constantly create new archives, and invent new technologies and methods of archiving, to outdo the previous ones and surpass their limitations. Therefore, this explains why archives are so fundamentally violent and destructive in nature, seeking to destroy the monopoly of knowledge and power of itsâ precedent, and replacing it with its own set of laws and order.
It is evident that in contemporary society, there are ongoing debates about the threats that certain modern archives pose on traditional archives. An interesting example of this tension that exists between archives is evident in the power play between physical bookstores and online retailers such as Amazon. Both archives serve the same purpose of selling books, but what are the defining features, which led to Amazonâs rise, yet, the decline of physical bookstores? Amazon suggests books based on what youâve read: your local store recommends what the employees like. Amazon has a wide variety of novels whilst local bookstores only have a relatively paltry selection. No matter what the reason, it is undeniable that Amazon (the new archive) is an increasing threat to the survivability of the bookstore industry. And the impacts of such tension between archives are not only limited to the industry itself, but it is also inclusive of those who work within that industry, and the reading culture itself is redefined. No longer can the bookstore industry afford to be complacent about its security, rather, it needs to eagerly search for a unique feature that can sustain its long-term survivability. Thus, it is conclusive that when new archives seek to destroy old archives, it also destroys the monopoly of knowledge and the public that has been build upon that archive.
There is an increasing engagement of the human archive with contemporary media archives and technologies. Smartphones are becoming pervasive in our everyday lives, as they encapsulate not only archival memory, but also the ability to archive and also access online archives via applications. As one of the first functions of a smartphone, most phone cameras had a small mirror at the back of the phone, purposefully placed there in order to make it easier for the user to take self-portrait photographs, or commonly known as â selfies. It established what is now known as the âselfie cultureâ, where individuals post their selfies on social networking sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. With the introduction of the front and back camera, it further entrenched this âselfieâ culture as particular angles became established as the decisive angle that could help one to achieve that âultimate selfieâ. However, the social implications of these functions have often been overlooked. With the establishment of the front and back camera, there has been an increasing emphasis on visuals within society, perpetuating notions of narcissism and the need to meet visual standards. Thus, these cultural practices seep through into society where it constitutes the way we dress, present ourselves, and the way we live.
There is an underlying philosophy evident in contemporary media archives, which differentiates it from precedent archives. That is, the presentation and organisation of news feeds are currently underpinned by the philosophy that âif itâs not recent, itâs not importantâ (Ogle 2010). Twitter and Facebook newsfeeds alike, are presented in a reverse-chronological format to highlight whatâs happening now. The reason behind it lies in the idea that increasing importance is placed on the real time, rather than the past. Therefore, particularly for social media archives such as Twitter, it assists in creating real-time publics or as Bruns and Burgess (2011) describes it, âad-hoc publicsâ. The social function of this means that public conversation and âlanguage itself is liberated from the spatial-temporal constraints of its ephemeral materialisation in speechâ (Coulmas 1989, p.7). This means that in real-time more people are able participate and contribute to public discussions. Bruns & Burgess (2011, p.7) argue that the foundation of Twitterâs recognition as an important tool for the discussion of current events lies in its flexibility of forming new hashtag communities as and when they are needed, without restriction. Moreover, the bottom-up nature of Twitter as a communicative space means that institutional participants are not able to effectively channel or dominate public conversation. Thus such platforms aim to distribute centralised authority to its users by assisting the dissemination of their opinions and personal expressions to a wider public.
Ultimately, archives are both destructive in imposing a new order, yet conservative in the sense that they seek to sustain the new laws it establishes.
References
Bruns, A. & Burgess, J.E. 2011, 'The Use of Twitter hashtags in the formation of ad hob publics', Queensland University of Technology, Australia.
Coulmas, Florian. (1989) The Writing Systems of the World. Oxford: Blackwell.
Derrida, Jacques (1995) âArchive FeverâA Freudian Impressionâ, Diacritics, vol. 25, no. 2, pp.9-63.
Enszer, Julie R. (2008) Julie R. Enszer (personal blog), 'Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida', November 16, <http://julierenszer.blogspot.com/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html>
Ibrahim, Y 2008, Blogs as the Peopleâs Archive: The Phantom Public and Virtual Presence, Journal of New Communications Research 3/1, pp. 65-73.
Ogle, M. 2010, 'Archive Fever: A love letter to the post real-time webâ, mattogle.com, December 16, <http://mattogle.com/archivefever/>.