MONDAY, September 20, 2010
time: 14:30
location: St. Pat’s 345
"Archive, Media, Trauma"
Amit Pinchevski
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Discussions on memory nowadays seem to proceed in two general directions. On the one hand, there is a growing interest in mediated memory: the various forms by which memory is formed and shared by means of media technologies, especially new media and multimedia. On the other hand, there is a consistent preoccupation with traumatic memory, that is, with the ways past episodes, which have been blocked out of private or public consciousness, return to haunt the present in various displaced manifestations. I want to argue that these two seemingly divergent types of memory are in fact interlinked, both historically and conceptually. What links them together is the technological apparatus of the audiovisual archive, which has seen significant technological transformations during the last three decades.
In this presentation, I attempt to establish a triangulated relation between archive, media and trauma. At issue are three interrelated claims: (1) As opposed to the exclusionary and formal model of traditional archive, contemporary archive involves inclusive and participatory practices by means of media technologies, making the archive a site for the creative production of memories by intentional communities. (2) A precursor to these archival formations is the Yale video archive for Holocaust testimonies, which was established in 1978 under the double imperative of safekeeping and dissemination. This specific audiovisual configuration provided much of the material for what later became known as “trauma theory,” influencing thereby the way we now come to understand trauma. (3) With these new archival formations, trauma itself becomes ever more transferable, having the potential to affect wider publics while evoking Holocaust memory as the universal trope for historical trauma. Understanding the immense social, political and cultural implications ascribed nowadays to trauma would therefore be incomplete without considering how trauma is constituted by its mediations.
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