Archive Fever

The first image that I imagine when confronted with the idea of archives is that of a room stacked with boxes containing folders of numerous files. I usually allude to evidence rooms in police precincts as they contain vast amounts of information to be accessed later by the detective. Archives are mediums that store data that could be useful in the future. In this sense our memories of events can count as archives. However as media rapidly evolves into the digital age, archives are becoming more digital. Whether we are using social media, emails, blogs, YouTube and a variety of other websites we are leaving more traces of our personal lives online, “we are miniarchivists ourselves in this information society” (Parikka 2013).

by: Hgrobe <http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AWI-core-archive_hg.jpg#filelinks>

Derrida argues that those who can create archives have the ability to determine the culture within the society. He also presents this idea of ‘Archive Fever’ which is the “to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement” (Derrida 1996 p.91). Put more simply, we have a human tendency to record our experiences and memories into archives because we deemed a certain event in our lives poignant.

Archive fever has certainly become more prominent in the digital age as different forms of digital publishing are forcing society to record everything. And when I mean everything, I mean everything. Twitter for example has become a site, where people would openly express their thoughts, activities, photographs almost every minute. This information overload and this desperate need to be remembered and to remember is part of the reasons why I try to refrain from using Twitter as much as possible. Ogle (2010) alludes to this change in attitude with archiving, that “if it’s not recent, it’s not important”.  A problem with websites like twitter, where real-time experiences are captured every minute and made permanent in the internet, could be the vast amount of information stored in the web.  As our personal archives become richer, a majority of it is neglected as it becomes harder to look for in our internet histories.

However this does not mean that archive fever should be treated as an illness. Archiving allows us to digitally enhance our lives. Facebook allows us to stores photos and tags can be used to easily search for related content. The internet has allowed us to store more information than ever before and has made our capabilities to remember experiences in our lifetimes much easier to access. As Derrida mentioned “there would indeed be no archive desire without the radical finitude, without the possibility of forgetfulness” (Enszer 2008). We archive because it is our means to stay connected to society and the world.

References

Derrida, J. and Prenowitz, E. (1996). Archive fever. 1st ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Enszer, J. (2008). Julie R. Enszer: Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida. [online] Julierenszer.blogspot.com.au. Available at: http://julierenszer.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/archive-fever-freudian-impression-by.html [Accessed 25 Aug. 2014].

Ogle, M. (2010). Archive Fever: a love letter to the post real-time web. [online] Mattogle.com. Available at: http://mattogle.com/archivefever/[Accessed 25 Aug. 2014].

Parikka, Jussi (2013) ‘Archival Media Theory: An Introduction to Wolfgang Ernst’s Media Archaeology’ in Ernst, Wolfgang Digital Memory and the Archive Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 1-22