[Reader-list] History and archival freedom of the subject etc.

[sadan at sarai.net]

Dear Arnab and Ritwik,
subjectivity is crucial. And this is why in my very first mail ( joining
the discussion) I argued  to include Agamben. In my followup mails too, I
am trying to move away from Foucault (without loosing him). We certainly
need to elaborate on this but I strongly feel that the question of
subjectivity is too broad to provide any purchase. We have to address
specific aspects of it.
Arnab, I will be the last person to free archive from history. what I
argued in my last mail is to explore the tension( I talked about political
project of liberating archives from disciplinary history and the need to go
back to the association between history and archive simultaneously). I am
also not clear why issue of governmentality here. Prem, I do not think you
digress from the original question (if there was an original
question).Arnab would agree that we all are searching our questions and in
this search there is no defined path, atleast not to me.
Prem I also wanted to know something more grounded than Foucault. If I am
wrong you are architect and have been in thsi profession for  quite a long
time. If you remember, earlier I talked about how archives means different
to people and profession outside disciplinary history. I would request you
to reflect upon how archives is perceived within the profession of
architecture. I wish to understand how the idea of archive is practiced in
different professions and by professionals rather than how it is studied in
the disciplinary moulds only.(Arnab, kindly do not forget this last word,
only). In tihs sense, my current interest in archives is less a project of
intelelctual history and more about practices. This is certainly not to say
that two are not connected.The way a doctor maintains case-history of his
patients, a lawyer maintains records etc. Is there any fundamental
difference in their ordering, classification of records? But, difference
with what? Am I assuming the practice of archiving in disciplinary history
as monolithic?
wishes,
sadan.
       

On 8:19 pm 01/08/08 ARNAB CHATTERJEE <apnawritings at yahoo.co.in> wrote:
> Dear Ritwik,Sadan and Prem,
>                             A warm welcome to Ritwik.
> Welcome to the discussion and "broadening our horizon
> thus." This is also to introduce Ritwik to Reader list
> readers: Ritwik is the one of the most brilliant of
> the young generation scholars from Kolkata and is
> going to give all of us an intellectual nightmare but
> presently he has started with a chip.
>  I'll be brief today because as Sadan had predicted in
> an earlier mail,as an apprentice I'm learning from
> arguing and  I'm really cooking something and warming
> up. Lets see where it stands. A few rejoinders are in
> order :
>
> Sadan:
> Archive as a narrative of collection tied to
> governmentality apart from others and its gradual
> gravitation or usurpation by history--if this is the
> way you put it-- I've no problem( though I think the
> trajectory is different). For that, if remembrance,
> recollection etc. are substituted  in an act of
> lioberation, I have no problem too, but why would they
> be called archive which would be a transmutation of
> the same aesthetic, dear Sadan, not because they ( the
> re-ones)are preceeding, primordial forms.Speech is
> before writing but bears the same grammatological
> structure, but speech is not writing.And secondly,I'm
> not interested in freeing archive from history, if you
> are, I have no problem; My orginal question was, are
> there forms of history which were and still are free
> from the archival dependence?
>
> Prem :
> That a positvist de -temporality you don't understand,
> I cannot believe that. All scientific paradigms,
> formulas are readily a temporal. Recall our school
> days with science.I'll give you a nearer explanation :
> remember Benjamin's description of the loss of aura of
> art objects. Transfer that to the archival objects,
> you'll get to know what I'm hinting at and this a well
> known argument. And history ought to thematize time
> and be temporal--disciplinarily. but archival history
> with evidence is as stale with its source and
> origins--as Foucault described it.
>
> Ritwik :
> Welcome again! I have no problems if you start with
> Archaeology and come to terms slowly through
> subjectivity and say, interobjectivity. But
> archive,I'm learning from you though --isn't it more
> close to the Foucauldian provenance of governmentality
> than subjectivity as a primary first? The self
> constitution appears in that episode precisely( this
> is different from the Greek same self comportment).
> And again, as an apprentice I may remind you I'm not
> investigating the 'status of archives' Ritwik, I'm
> trying to get at some form of history or
> critical/effective history or genealogy which can do
> without 'archives' ( used in the disciplinary sense of
> history, ok?)
>
> Let us see where we get down
> arnab
>
>
>
>
>
> --- ritwik bhattacharyya <0supplement at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> >  Archive and the Subject
> >
> >
> >
> >  As has already been argued, the passage from
> >  Foucault's earlier works,
> >  especially 'Archaeology', (which stands for a sort
> >  of explanation of what
> >  Foucault had been doing in his first two or three
> >  works) to what would be
> >  called genealogy is important for adressing the
> >  question raised on the
> >  archive or its status. And this would draw our
> >  attention to the problem of
> >  subject formation/self-constitution of the subject
> >  -relating it to the
> >  archive. Much of later Foucault is valuable because
> >  of the questions on
> >  subjectivity that has been posed there.
> >
> >
> >
> >  But for the time being if one concentrates on
> >  'Archaeology of Knowledge' one
> >  would find that Foucault is trying his best to
> >  contest a certain idea of the
> >  subject found in the extant historiography  and  is
> >  attempting to look at
> >  the historiographic operation as a whole with this
> >  contestation in mind. It
> >  would be imprudent for us to pose the questions
> >  surrounding archive and its
> >  function etc. without at once raising the problem of
> >  subjectivity for
> >  discussion.
> >
> >
> >
> >  Hopefully this shall broaden our horizon a bit.
> >
> >
> >
> >  Thanks
> >
> >
> >  Ritwik.
> >  _________________________________________
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