Fiona Murphy (Anthropology, National University of Ireland)
Archives of sorrow: A discussion of the relationship of the archive to trauma, memory, loss and reconciliation in an Australian context
We primarily see the archive as a storehouse of memory and fact, as the place from whence history issues forth. However, the archive is much more than this; it is a site of memory and a place of trauma and pain. The archive houses what Virginia Wolf (1941) has called the, ‘scraps, orts and fragments,’ of an un-interrogated past. It is a place of sorrow and loss for many, where unpacified ghosts with unfinished business await, yielding stories and letters different to expectation, a site where loss is localized and realized. It is also a space of confrontation, where expectations are denounced as lies, and where the truth assumes a different colour. This paper examines the role of the archive in the lives of Australia’s Stolen Generations (Aboriginal Australians who were removed from their families and institutionalized from 1910 until the mid 1970s), and argues that returning to the archive is both an attempt to confront and negotiate past traumas and one’s relationship to unknown worlds. Through the use of an ethnographic case study, I will detail the important links between returning to the archive and ideas of healing, moving forward, and indeed nostalgia
The archive, as a locus of memory and suffering, as a storehouse of ghosts, stands testament to the losses which carved out the lives of many members of the Stolen Generations. It bespeaks the absent presence of alternative lives; it is a space of encounter with unrealized ways of being, and a place crowded with emotions. In journeying through the archive, searching for lost worlds, many of my respondents were attempting to trace their origins, and find the families and worlds from which they were removed. In returning to the archive, attempting to find home, many of my respondents are attempting to search out who they believe they really are, whom they could and should have been, and who they may become. Thus, this paper argues for an understanding of the archive, as not only a site of trauma, but as a space where healing (even reconciliation), becomes a very real possibility.
Fiona Murphy is a postdoctoral researcher in the anthropology department in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is currently working on an IRCHSS funded project called After Asylum: An Ethnographic Analysis of Refugee Integration (under Dr. Mark Maguire), which is examining the lives of Nigerian and Congolese refugees in a number of locations in Ireland. Her recently completed PhD was a study of trauma, memory, and reconciliation in the context of Australia's Stolen Generations.
The archive, as a locus of memory and suffering, as a storehouse of ghosts, stands testament to the losses which carved out the lives of many members of the Stolen Generations. It bespeaks the absent presence of alternative lives; it is a space of encounter with unrealized ways of being, and a place crowded with emotions. In journeying through the archive, searching for lost worlds, many of my respondents were attempting to trace their origins, and find the families and worlds from which they were removed. In returning to the archive, attempting to find home, many of my respondents are attempting to search out who they believe they really are, whom they could and should have been, and who they may become. Thus, this paper argues for an understanding of the archive, as not only a site of trauma, but as a space where healing (even reconciliation), becomes a very real possibility.
Fiona Murphy is a postdoctoral researcher in the anthropology department in the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. She is currently working on an IRCHSS funded project called After Asylum: An Ethnographic Analysis of Refugee Integration (under Dr. Mark Maguire), which is examining the lives of Nigerian and Congolese refugees in a number of locations in Ireland. Her recently completed PhD was a study of trauma, memory, and reconciliation in the context of Australia's Stolen Generations.
