Call for Papers: The Empire of Archives

Fri Feb 9 19:49:03 UTC 2007

The Empire of Archives

Invitation to a forum initiated by the international journals Ab Imperio and
Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe, Union soviétique et États
indépendants.

The editors of Ab Imperio and Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe,
Union soviétique et États independents invite experts on the history of
archives and archival specialists to take part in an intellectual experiment
of looking at imperial (as well as local and ministerial) archives through a
cultural-anthropological prism. Suggesting the role of archives as loci of
production and codification of knowledge about empire and situating them in
the multifaceted process of yielding power-knowledge, we propose the
following questions for discussion:

1. To what extent were the construction and architecture of archival
residence-buildings, and their geographic positioning determined by the
imperial character of the polities in question? What role did such archives
play in the ideology of empire-building, and which branches of government
were primarily responsible for bringing the archives to the task of
empire-building? What pedagogies were included in the training of archival
specialists, and to what extent did archivists reflect the heterogeneity of
the imperial space? 

2. Is it a historically valid assertion that the dominant (social or
national) group in a given empire determined the character and content of
archival collections? If so, how has the concomitant  selectivity of
archival materials shaped the parameters of imperial studies? Does that
imply that the history of an empire as viewed from the perspective of
archival collections appear reduced to the single voice of a dominant group?
Given the centrality of this issue for historiography, it is necessary to
pose a question about how and when the archival collections that represented
the view of these dominant groups within an empire were gathered, and which
aspects of this groups history are or are not represented in these archival
documents. It is also important to ponder how the structure of political,
scientific, and cultural communication in an empire shaped the structure of
its archives and the range of values ascribed to the archives historical
documents. Was either the structure or the concept of ascribing value
subject to historical change? What is the peculiarity of ministerial
archives? How did the process of selection and classification of documents
reflect the diversity of that empire? Given the prominent presence of
pluralism of legal norms and frameworks in each empire, it would be
illuminating to question how the processes of rationalization contributed to
archival selection and the classification of legal documents, and if this
legal pluralism retained its residual grip on the landscape of archival
collections. 

3. Looking at the center-periphery relations, it is important to inquire
into the influence of the periphery on the archival policy. For example,
consider a case from the history of the British empire with reference to
which historians documented an influence of legal precedents in labor
conflict resolutions in nineteenth century India over the reforms of labor
legislation in Great Britain. It was the process of building a special
Indian archive for legal and legislative acts that provided the basis for
this subsequent historical reconstruction. A comparatively inclined
historian would naturally be tempted to ask the question of whether there
are cases of this type to be found in the history of the Russian Empire,
USSR or other empires?  With respect to the history of the Russian Empire
and USSR, it is pertinent to look at the archival-building that was
associated with the treatment of the Eastern question, Jewish question,
and other such questions by the imperial government. What were the
documents requested by government officials (or collected and used as the
foundation of archival collections) for the purpose of elaborating a reform
policy?

4. Pursuant to the question of the historically constituted notion of
archival value, it is important to explore why certain types of documents
were destroyed or lost, and why their historic value was seen as
insignificant from the viewpoint of government or society? Does this history
of lost collections reveal a policy of silencing that pertains to the
underpinning principles of viewing the past through the prism of certain
hierarchies of importance and relevance? Consequently, what is the
contribution of this policy of silencing to the invisibility of certain
aspects or spaces of imperial history in the modern interpretative
frameworks of historiography?

5. Finally, there is a question of historical claims, legitimacy, and
cultural values. The history of the post Soviet space (and one can claim
that it is the history of all world empires) is the one of reallocation of,
and dispute about the displaced or improperly placed cultural values.
Archival collections are among them. It is therefore illuminating to pose a
question of how the disputes about the restitution of cultural values, and
archival collections in particular, shed light on the constructed historic
legitimacy of new states and the perception of interconnectedness to, or
fragmentation from the past imperial spaces. Note, for example, the case of
returning some of the archives of the Russian emigration to the
contemporary Russian Federation, or the reallocation of archival collections
in the Soviet period from the central archives to the archives of the Soviet
republics. What stands behind the rhetoric of returning or historic
entitlement for these cultural values in the form of archival documents,
and what are the influences of a historicist argument on legal disputes?

We encourage potential contributors to write to the editors of both journals
at the email addresses below indicating interest and suggesting an article
topic or formulations of the proposed questions. We look forward to a
stimulating discussion. 

Deadline for submissions is mid-August 2007. For more details please contact
the editors. 

Ab Imperio

 <mailto:office at abimperio.net> office at abimperio.net

Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe, Union soviétique et États
indépendants

stanzian at idhe.ens-cachan.fr

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
  options, and more.  Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
                    http://seelangs.home.comcast.net/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------