As Jacques Derrida reminds us, archives are by no means innocent containers of historical documents. Decisions concerning what material to store and what to discard always privilege certain hegemonic narratives of the past over others – so much so that ”[t]here is no political power without control of the archive, if not of memory” (Derrida 1995, 11; emphasis in original). This course seeks to untangle the politics operating behind and through the archive and aims to dissect the ways in which archives engage in storytelling. We will begin with a discussion of what cultural products and institutions, beside the museum, acquire archival functions and what their respective roles and responsibilities in societies are. Addressing the practices of not only collecting and ordering but also that of seeing (and reading), we will reflect on the role of the museum and other archives in processes of nation building, as well as on their position as curators of knowledge and memory. We will furthermore take into account recent debates on, for instance, the decolonisation or queering of museum spaces and other mediators of knowledge, the ways in which such institutions function as gatekeepers and thus contribute to formations of selfhood and Otherness.
Throughout the course, we will primarily rely on critical readings from the fields of cultural studies, museum studies, and memory studies. Our discussions will focus on such theoretical texts and contexts as much as on concrete examples, many of which we will at least be able to explore online. If the situation regarding the coronavirus pandemic permits, we will also try to address the topic a bit more hands on and visit an exhibition ourselves or talk to museum practitioners.
- Lehrende/r: Marlena Tronicke