la réification des archives

19:58 Jun 9, 2009 

- whichever way it is working, it is asking for a wider contextual understanding of the events in question to be sought than can be found in the documentation in the archives.

19:54 Jun 9, 2009 

Perhaps "les details qui reproduisent des méandres psychologiques" is crucial to understanding this. It certainly does suggest that an approach that avoids getting too mired in the psychology of the main actors, perhaps dealing more with social, political, economic and strategic issues is called for. So this also suggests that the archives being talked about as liable to be reified may be (largely) personal journals and correspondence.

19:35 Jun 9, 2009 

I don't think this is about 'mistaking' the archives for something else, but rather getting lost in the details and losing the broader picture or significance of an event. In other words in allowing the documentation in the archives to be the sum total of what we understand about an event, so allowing it to concretize (yuk!) the event or create stasis in our understanding of it, instead of comprehending it by means of other forms of knowledge. Oral history or film footage might be two other ways, though both can be lodged in archives, of course.