Archive for November 2010

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[ecrea] Symposium: Archives and the Politics of History and Memory, Uni of Brighton

Sat Nov 20 08:39:47 GMT 2010



ARCHIVES AND THE POLITICS OF HISTORY AND MEMORY

A One-Day Symposium organised by the Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative

and Histories, University of Brighton

Saturday 4 December 2010, 9.30am - 6.00pm, Falmer Campus, University of Brighton


panel 1: Archives, memory work and conflicted pasts

Anita Rupprecht (Senior Lecturer in Cultural History, School of Humanities, University of

Brighton), 'The archives of transatlantic slavery, silence and the politics of memory'



Beverley Butler (Lecturer in Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage, Institute of Archaeology,

University College London), 'Archival memory ? elite Alexandrias and popular engagements

with Palestinian "archive fever" '



panel 2: Activist memory, alternative archives and community histories

Through decentering the figure of the "trained historian" to look at activist initiatives in making community

histories, this integrated group panel draws on the recent experience of the "Do You Remember Olive Morris?"

project to consider the use of oral histories, online blogging, and visual methods to create alternative archives and

map radical legacies and trajectories.



Red Chidgey (DIY feminist historian, blogger and co-organiser of the transnational digital archive and

community resource, <http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net>www.grassrootsfeminism.net);

Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre (Artist and former member of the now disbanded Remembering Olive

Collective, the South London community history, archive and blog project);

Alexandra Molano-Avilan (Community historian and activist, and also former member of the now

disbanded Remembering Olive Collective).



panel 3: Archives and working-class history and memory in postwar Britain

Nick Mansfield (Senior Research Fellow in History at the University of Central Lancashire, formerly

Director of the People's History Museum, Manchester), 'Archives and material culture - People's

History over five decades'



Sally Alexander (Emeritus Professor of Modern History, Goldsmiths, University of London and

Founding Editor of History Workshop Journal); 'Oral histories and cross-class conversations:

reconstructing the structure of feeling of the welfare state'



plenary

Discussion led by Respondent: Andrew Flinn (Senior Lecturer, Archives and Records Management,

in the Department of Information Studies, University College London; and lead researcher on the

AHRC-funded 'Community Archives and Identities: documenting and sustaining community heritage' project)



Registration

This event is open to all but delegates must register in advance. The registration fee is £80, with

concessions for retired/unemployed/unaffiliated delegates (£50) and students (£35). The

registration fee includes tea/coffee and lunch.

To register to attend please email Nicola Clewer: <mailto:(nc95 /at/ brighton.ac.uk)>(nc95 /at/ brighton.ac.uk)

The deadline for registration is 24th November.

For further information on the Centre please visit our website: <http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/mnh>http://arts.brighton.ac.uk/mnh



Abstracts



Panel 1

Anita Rupprecht: 'The archives of transatlantic slavery, silence, and the politics

of memory'

This paper uses the historical records of a Royal Commission of Inquiry sent to the West Indies in

1821 to reflect more broadly on the interpretive issues at stake in addressing the archive of

transatlantic slavery. Black Atlantic writers have long debated the ?unspeakability? of slavery and the

issue of archival absence, and yet they have also engaged the official archive and the mythic and

debilitating narratives deposited there in a myriad of creative ways. The ethical imperative to brush

history against the grain is founded in an understanding of transatlantic slavery as a historical and

human catastrophe. In highlighting the generic and representational implications of this approach,

the paper considers what kinds of memory work might be attentive to both mourning and redress,

and how far the discourse of reparation can provide a mediating link between the idea of a

traumatic history and contemporary political intervention.



Beverley Butler: 'Archival memory ? elite Alexandrias and popular engagements with

Palestinian "archive fever" '

My critical objective within this paper is to give concrete examples of the diverse forms and

expressions of archival memory. I critically explore my own research projects as a means to

understand archival memory and its contemporary efficacies at both elite and more popular level.

This elite-popular shift is mirrored in my own ethnographic studies of the revival of Bibliotheca

Alexandrina and research on heritage and wellbeing in Jerusalem and the occupied Palestinian

territories. This shift of focus takes me from a case-study context synonymous with elite

institutionalisation of the archive to that of a popular engagement in which the person/ community

is in ?dialogue? with alternative conceptions and forms of archival memory and with the efficacies

synonymous with particular modes of cultural transmission. This shift, in return, requires an

alignment to the genre of ?enchanted heritage? (cf. Byrne 2004) in which the continuities of sacred,

and magical, ideal and real discourses can be identified from North to South (see Parish 2007). It is

also a movement that, I will argue, ?transcends modernism?s limitations? (Byrne 2004:19) and is

capable of offering resonance to what has been diagnosed as a popular Palestinian ?archive fever?

(Doumani 2009) and as such synonymous with attempts to resist the on-going violences of

occupation. In my conclusions, therefore, I argue that a key of archival memory-work is the capacity

to ?speak to? the diversity of human cultural experience and to give recognition to diverse strategies

of wellbeing, and cultural transmission; many of which remain ?outside? dominant archival and

therapeutic discourse. These need to be re-centred in future discussions and to do so is crucially

important in terms of the recognition of more ?just? archival futures.



Panel 2

Red Chidgey, Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre, Alexandra Molano-Avilan: 'Activist

memory, alternative archives and community histories'

Fusing artistic, activist and academic approaches to making community histories, the Do You

Remember Olive Morris? project was a successful grassroots initiative that reclaimed social and

political memories of Brixton-based social justice activist and British Black Panther, Olive Morris.

Volunteer-run, the project generated multiple sites of archival records, including oral histories,

public collections, exhibitions and the blog <http://rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com>http://rememberolivemorris.wordpress.com. This

integrated group panel aims to look at some of the means and outcomes of this project, both in

terms of creating new, digital archives alongside more conventional institutional depositories, and

some of the issues raised by the dissemination of the cultural memory/image of Olive Morris. We

will ask questions such as: what constitutes a ?usable past? within this project? and what strategies

and creative methods can best be used to meet these needs? Furthermore, as the cultural memory

of Olive Morris spreads, what opportunities for new connections alongside risks of appropriation

and decontextualisation take place as images of Olive Morris are taken up and re-activated in

various commercial and activist sites of meaning making?



Red Chidgey will begin with an introduction to the Remember Olive Morris project and some of

the theoretical frameworks which can help us understand the types of memories and archives that

have been produced by the project.



Ana Laura Lopez de la Torre Brief will explain the motivations to launch the project - such as the

gaps within the official archival records - and the key collaborations which made the project

possible. Drawing on Ana Laura's context as a community artist, this segment will also raise issues

of how artistic approaches can lead to a different texture to history making.



Alexandra Molano-Avilan will reflect on the experience of making oral histories and relating the

past to the present through these stories, and on the role played by activist memory in creating

icons and inspiration to strengthen social movement struggles.



In the concluding segment, Ana Laura and Alexandra will critically consider how the cultural

memory of Olive Morris is now being deployed within activist, journalistic, and commercial milieus,

by drawing upon a visual map outlining how images and discussions of Olive are being disseminated

nationally and internationally.



Panel 3

Sally Alexander: 'Oral histories and cross class conversations: reconstructing the

structure of feeling of the welfare state'

Oral history archives, like memoir, are vital sources for re-thinking the subjective dimensions of

need and desire which underpinned mid-twentieth-century social democracy and welfare states.

Most oral history archives have been constituted since the 1960s, a product of radical social

history; they are open, accessible to all and their particular quality lies in the vein of subjective

feeling and thought which spoken memories reveal. This paper will explore the use of London

childhood memories to reveal the structure of feeling of mid-century social democracy.

D.W.Winnicott, paediatrician and psychoanalyst, one of the architects of maternal and infant

provision in the 1940s and 50s, derived his ideas about ordinary mothers, the infant/mother

relationship, the good-enough home and democracy from his forty years medical practice and

60,000 case-notes. These case-notes are not open to the public, but some are cited in his

published papers; they give insight not only into intimate lives of working women and their families,

but show how concepts and ideas which shaped a generation of mothers and children post-war

were generated through clinical encounters and conversations.



Nick Mansfield: 'Archives and material culture - People's History over five decades'

Nick Mansfield was Director of the People's History Museum in Manchester for 21 years. The

Museum looks after the Labour History Archive and Study Centre, including the archives of the

Labour Party and the Communist Party of Great Britain. In this paper he will use the history of this

institution to examine changes in the way working class history has been collected and interpreted

since the 1970s. The paper will also draw on previous experiences and on a subsequent academic

career.







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