Dwelling on the “anarchival”: archives as indexes of loss and absence

Abstract

This article re-examines the role of the death drive in Derrida’s Archive Fever in relation to archival theory. It brings Derrida’s more psychoanalytic claims about the dualistic tension between remembering and forgetting to the forefront and reconsiders the unquestioned faith in preservation. During a time when the impetus for cultural recovery is ubiquitous, the role of the death drive in the realization and survival of the archive is left unacknowledged. The “anarchival”, which alludes to the destructive forces of the archive, has been taken up more actively in the contemporary art setting than the archival setting. By lingering in the depths of this archival underside through the interpolation of critical theory and analysis of contemporary archival artworks, I hope to continue archival theory’s engagement with the humanities, and frame processes of deconstructing, destructing, undoing, and unbecoming as kinds of archival labour. This kind of labour is necessary in thinking through more nuanced approach to social justice in the archival setting.