Abstract
The digital archive is often described in opposition to its physical counterpart. Media theorist Wolfgang Ernst has coined the term “dynarchive” to describe the former, a phrase that neatly contrasts digital archival remixability with the statis of the physical archive and its hierarchical fond structure. The article both uses and questions this characterization by examining the archive’s physical and digital document practices in three areas: (1) Hierarchical collection description versus individual document description; (2) Original order versus relevance-based results; and (3) Archival selection practices and the illusion of completeness. Archival structure and description have been central to the authority and evidentiary value of archival documents. Yet both the market logics of the internet and criticism from historically oppressed groups have challenged these connections. Using the dynarchive as a conceptual frame, this article examines archival digitization's potential for decolonization of the archive via its fragmentation into a non-hierarchical web of interrelated documents.
Highlights
Proceedings from the Document AcademyVolume 8 Issue 2 Proceedings from the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Document Academy 2021
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The archive is constructed with more findable transcendent moments for those researching from the perspective of the powerful, while those searching for the historically disempowered are at a disadvantage
Summary
Volume 8 Issue 2 Proceedings from the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Document Academy 2021. Media theorist Wolfgang Ernst has argued that digital archives can be understood much differently, as “dynarchives,” a phrase that makes their networked, fluid logic clear, and neatly contrasts with the supposed statis of the physical archive and its hierarchical fond structure (Ernst 2013) This contrast is reflected in the stories scholars tell about document findability in these two archival iterations, as evidenced by the two introductory quotations (Dean 2012; Putnam 2016). Archival selection practices and the illusion of completeness These three areas are traditionally critical for maintaining the authority and evidentiary value of archival documents, covering provenance and original order as well as the archive’s historical role in drawing lines between personal and public memory. It is only through such an analysis that the relationship between the documentality of archival materials and the inequalities built into archives can be assessed
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