AN (IM)POSSIBLE ARCHIVOLOGY. ON THE NOTION OF ARCHIVE IN PHILOSOPHICAL THINKING

Abstract

This text aims to delve into some of the axes that articulate the philosophical discussion on the notion of archive. This discussion has been subsumed into the so-called “archival turn” that would cover the field of studies in the humanities and social sciences during the last three decades. However, in this paper we will show that previous philosophical reflection, carried out by authors such as Walter Benjamin, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, among others, transforms the conventional sense of the notion of archive in the course of the 20th century, in such a manner that the diagnosis about the current archival turn becomes itself paradoxical. From this perspective, the text proposes to delve into four dimensions that, in one way or another, cut across the philosophical discussion about the archive: 1) the inorganic character latent in every file; 2) the spill over of the place of the file, 3) the link between the archive and a general economy of power, and 4) the problem of access to the archive. The analysis of these four dimensions, derived from their philosophical problematization, forces us to maintain the irresolvable nature of the archival question itself and, at the same time, the inescapable link between its theoretical and political aspects.