Happy Christmas and good bye from Archives Tragic
Dec 20th, 2008 by Anne-Marie
‘Lizzie’s stuff’ is Archives Tragic’s Last (substantial) Post. Although I am not taking the site down, I will not be writing any more posts. I will leave the posts open for comment for a while, and then switch the comments function off. (A time-consuming and dispiriting aspect of running a blog is dealing with ghastly spam.)
I think AT has run its natural course, although I’m not saying that there won’t be an Archives Tragic 2 one day. (’Return to Archives Tragic’? ‘Archives Tragic Strikes Back’? ‘Archives Tragic goes to Kirrin Island’? Suggestions welcome.) For the moment I would like to put more time into some bigger projects, including a couple of journal articles which demand to be written.
AT has been enormously satisfying and good fun and my thanks go to all readers and commentors - Tim Roberts and Christina Spittel especially - who have loyally supported the blog and kept it going since it began in April 2007.
December is my least favourite time of the year (’another year gone … ‘) but happy Christmas to all, and best wishes for 2009.
Anne-Marie
5 Responses to “Happy Christmas and good bye from Archives Tragic”
Well done Anne-Maire on a wonderful blog. I wish you well on your future writing endeavours. I’ll be watching for your progress and look forward to it! Best wishes for 2009.
Thanks Helen! Same to you. Keep writing.
No! You can’t just close my favourite café!
But thanks for having it — and for having us. The blog has taught me a lot about archives, and got me thinking more about people create the records that we take for granted, and how they come to be in the places they are. First-rate ammunition to shoot holes into this sort of argument, from one of Germany’s leading theoreticians on cultural memory:
“the knowledge that is stored in the archive is inert. It is stored and potentially available, but it is not interpreted. This would exceed the competence of the archivists. […] Margaret Atwood […] calls archivists and librarians ‘the guardian angels of paper’ […] These guardian angels are so inconspicuous that they remain almost as invisible as the angels themselves.” (Aleida Assmann, 2008; the Atwood reference is from In Search of Alias Grace: On Writing Canadian Historical Fiction)
Good Gawd. The Attwood I can sort of understand, and archivists have to take some of the blame themselves for their invisibility. But the Assmann has me gasping for breath! (And not just because of the heat tonight.)
Thanks Christina for your many comments. You have kept the blog going, and so often made me think again about my rather easy assumptions. See you soon in a real cafe.
“the Assmann has me gasping for breath!” — good. I thought I was just hyperventilating. As a person who loves the behind-the-scenes spaces in a museum, you will also be pleased to know that Prof Assmann has them marked down as “cellars and attics”.
I’ll be writing you an e-mail in a mo to see whether you might be able to give me a few references to key/standard texts on archival theory and perhaps one or two of the core debates, just for a footnote.
None of your assumptions are easy (that prize would have to go to Prof Assmann, sorry), but all of them are eloquently expressed. And yes, let’s tackle a real cafe someday soon.