Forgetting to Remember: Jeannette Bastian - 13 March 2013

On the 13 March I attended the Jenkinson Lecture at UCL, organised by the Department of Information Studies, and given by Professor Jeannette Bastian of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Simmons College, Boston.

Bastian is interested in how memory studies can inform the work of practising archivists. To begin with, she spoke of the so-called 'memory boom' in academia, dominant since the 1980s, and the reification of memory in memory studies. She describes memory as omnipresent and:

- Situated in social frameworks.
- Enabled by technologies.
- Confronted by cultural institutions.

So where do archivists fit into memory studies? Community memories are often not recorded in ways that are consistent with standard archival practice. However, the emergence of memory studies indicates a renewed interest in 'untold stories'. The emphasis has shifted from the 19th century practice of accumulating archives as part of the process of nation-building to the 20th/21st century exploration of marginalised narratives and discourses through recording oral histories and other non-traditional memorial forms. Jan Assman writes, 'the concept of cultural memory comprises that body of reusable texts, images and rituals specific to each society in each epoch'.

Of the relationship between archives and memory, Brien Brothman makes a distinction between 'memory's archivist' and 'history's archivist'. Annette Wieviorka takes a 'historian of memory' approach in The Era of the Witness, in which she writes about the dynamic 'presentness' of memory.

Bastian referenced several examples of national libraries and archives that use memory as part of their rhetoric, including the American Memory project, Library Archives Canada on the 'continuing memory' of the nation, Archives UK, who state of archives, 'they are our collective memory' and the Australian Government Records, who invoke 'the memory of our nation'.

Archivists have had a tendency to view memory as a subject as opposed to memory as a framework but are now gradually moving into that realm.

Marita Sturken uses the term 'technologies of memory' in her study of traumatic world events, channelled through the mass media. She defines memory as a narrative as opposed to a replica or surrogate for the actual event, commenting that 'personal memory, cultural memory and history do not exist within neatly defined borders'.

Bastian then defined three methods for archiving memory, through:

- Memory texts as memory's embodiment in texts, talismans, imagery and performance.
- Community archives as self-documenting grassroots movements.
- Communities of records, whereby the community is both a record creating entity and a memory frame that contextualises the records it creates.

Bastian's take on technology is that it gives a practical agency to the task of archiving memory.

Example Archives

A Living Archive - John Cage - http://exhibitions.nypl.org/johncage/
A Becoming Archive - Project Save - http://www.projectsave.org/

Further References

Sturken, Marita, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.

AERI 2010 - Collective Memory Research Methods - http://aeri2010.wetpaint.com/page/Collective+Memory+Research+Methods

Look out also for an article, published in Archival Science, involving Margaret Hedstrom, which is a survey of the use of memory in archival literature.