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.
