Conference Review
The Political Life of Documents: Archives, Memory and Contested Knowledge
15 -16 January 2010
The Political Life of Documents: archives, memory and contested knowledge was held at CRASSH on 15-16 January, 2010. There were 17 paper presentations, with two keynote speakers, Prof. Christopher Andrew, the official historian of MI-5, and Prof. Ann Stoler, a noted anthropologist. Prof. Stoler's keynote was held in the Mill Lane Lecture Rooms, in conjunction with the Department of Social Anthropology, and drew a crowd of 80-100 people from across the university.
The conference's presentations covered a variety of approaches to documents and archives, including documents as political struggle, documents as testimonies and affect, and working in sensitive archives. A final panel questioned conventional views of archives as the final resting place of physical documents, and instead challenged the conference participants to think of the ramifications of digital media and freedom of information regimes upon the structure and function of what we label archives.
A key theme of many papers and discussions at the conference was the ongoing interaction between people, their documents and archives. Catherine Trundle's paper, for example, detailed how veterans of nuclear weapons tests strive to have new documents entered into official archives to give them legitimacy and bolster their legal claims. In analysing the quest of Australia's Stolen Generation to recover their pasts through archival records, Fiona Murphy demonstrated how such documents could challenge identities, rather than solely affirm or reconstruct them. Discussions throughout the conference also explored the role of regulations, and how an awareness that freedom of information acts would make documents more accessible arguably leads to forms censorship, perhaps ultimately undermining the very intention of the acts. In such a context, documents reflect even less the decisions that resulted in goals being reached or policies implemented and instead provide a fig leaf to hide real power relations and negotiations from a future archive-reading public.
Other papers from across the panels further challenged not only concepts of truth, as in Marc Aymes talk on 'Documentary Currencies Counterfeited in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire', but documents and archives themselves. For example both Mark Turin's presentation on digital documents and Noel Lobley's on a South African music archive, provided alternative models for what archives can contain and their function as a public sphere.
A further theme explored was who was in control of the relationship between people and archives. Should we talk about people and their documents, or would it be more fruitful to talk about documents and their people? In this regard, Chris Kaplonski's paper showed that rather than documents reflecting people, people are constructed by what documents say about them.
The convenors are now preparing the publication of an edited volume based on the conference. This would be the first of its kind and scope in anthropology to discuss the political life of documents.
The conference could not have taken place without the support and hard work of CRASSH and in particular Sam Mather and Anna Malinowska, which allowed the convenors to focus on bringing together what they thought were interesting proposals, and focus during the conference itself on the papers and discussion, rather than being caught up in the logistical aspects of running the conference.
Christopher Kaplonski
Senior Research Associate
Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge
The conference's presentations covered a variety of approaches to documents and archives, including documents as political struggle, documents as testimonies and affect, and working in sensitive archives. A final panel questioned conventional views of archives as the final resting place of physical documents, and instead challenged the conference participants to think of the ramifications of digital media and freedom of information regimes upon the structure and function of what we label archives.
A key theme of many papers and discussions at the conference was the ongoing interaction between people, their documents and archives. Catherine Trundle's paper, for example, detailed how veterans of nuclear weapons tests strive to have new documents entered into official archives to give them legitimacy and bolster their legal claims. In analysing the quest of Australia's Stolen Generation to recover their pasts through archival records, Fiona Murphy demonstrated how such documents could challenge identities, rather than solely affirm or reconstruct them. Discussions throughout the conference also explored the role of regulations, and how an awareness that freedom of information acts would make documents more accessible arguably leads to forms censorship, perhaps ultimately undermining the very intention of the acts. In such a context, documents reflect even less the decisions that resulted in goals being reached or policies implemented and instead provide a fig leaf to hide real power relations and negotiations from a future archive-reading public.
Other papers from across the panels further challenged not only concepts of truth, as in Marc Aymes talk on 'Documentary Currencies Counterfeited in the 19th Century Ottoman Empire', but documents and archives themselves. For example both Mark Turin's presentation on digital documents and Noel Lobley's on a South African music archive, provided alternative models for what archives can contain and their function as a public sphere.
A further theme explored was who was in control of the relationship between people and archives. Should we talk about people and their documents, or would it be more fruitful to talk about documents and their people? In this regard, Chris Kaplonski's paper showed that rather than documents reflecting people, people are constructed by what documents say about them.
The convenors are now preparing the publication of an edited volume based on the conference. This would be the first of its kind and scope in anthropology to discuss the political life of documents.
The conference could not have taken place without the support and hard work of CRASSH and in particular Sam Mather and Anna Malinowska, which allowed the convenors to focus on bringing together what they thought were interesting proposals, and focus during the conference itself on the papers and discussion, rather than being caught up in the logistical aspects of running the conference.
Christopher Kaplonski
Senior Research Associate
Mongolia & Inner Asia Studies Unit
Department of Social Anthropology
University of Cambridge
