The Beginning of an Idea about an End: On Digital, Diasporic, Syrian Archives

Abstract

Based on ethnographic fieldwork at two Syrian organizations, the Syrian Archive and Bidayyat, both founded in exile but operating at different ends of the archival scale, this article theorizes the idea of an archive as a horizon of expectation that orients activists toward future justice in the face of defeat. While Bidayyat primarily associates the power of the archive with the judgment of history and the Syrian Archive with legal judgment, their underlying idea of an archive gives activists a sense of an ending, even when justice proves elusive.