Theories of the Archive from Across the Disciplines

2004/01/01 by Marlene Manoff · 1 voice · 4 citations
Arts and Humanities · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Copyright and Intellectual Property #Digital and Traditional Archives Management #Water Governance and Infrastructure

paper · pdf · doi:10.1353/pla.2004.0015

openalex publication_date 2004/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Creative and compelling theoretical formulations of the archive have emerged from a host of disciplines in the last decade. Derrida and Foucault, as well as many other humanists and social scientists, have initiated a broadly interdisciplinary conversation about the nature of the archive. This literature suggests a confluence of interests among scholars, archivists, and librarians that is fueled by a shared preoccupation with the function and fate of the historical and scholarly record. The following essay provides an exploration and overview of this archival discourse.

Citations

• The Rani of Sirmur: An Essay in Reading the Archives

Cited by

• Mind the Gap. On archival politics and historical theory in the digital age
• Modern Special Collections: Embracing the Future While Taking Care of the Past
• Digital History and the Politics of Digitization
• The conceptual landscape of digital curation

Discussions

• It's *so* interesting to look in the genealogy of "archival abundance" & "archival turn" discourses... & to see that in the early 2000s, the 1995 book that got people talking about archives was Derrid [bsky, 0 points, 1 comments]