Report from international conference Histoire(s) d’archives

Written by Marek Kettner (Faculty of Arts, Charles University)

Since the publication Jacques Derrida’s seminal work Mal d’Archive, the notion of the archive has been widely recognized as non-intuitive and problematic. Derrida’s inquiry holds together even more as time progresses and the technological capacities for gathering, archiving and structuring data about the past as well as literary, visual, acoustic and other materials are getting more efficient and powerful. Although it may seem so, the archive is not omnipotent, it doesn’t hide in its boxes and digital storage places the whole picture of the past. It is therefore helpful to keep lively the discussion about the nature and role of the archive in contemporary society. Such was the main motivation for the conference Histoire(s) d’archives which didn’t explore primarily the histories stored in various archives but rather focused on the histories of archives themselves. When were some of the internationally renowned archives founded, what was their development and how did they impact society? These were the main questions that the invited experts, among which archive directors, philosophers and historians, tried to tackle. The event was organized by the major actors of the network “AITIA – Archives of International Theory, an Intercultural Approach” as well as CNRS, CEFRES, Museum of Literature Prague, and the Jan Patočka Archives Prague.The conference took off with two presentations on the two major philosophic archives in Prague, namely on the Jan Patočka Archive and Ladislav Hejdánek digital archive. Both of the philosophers struggled during the communist regime and the story about the “evacuation” of Patočka’s Archive to Vienna during the 1980’s has become almost legendary in the philosophic circles. After the revolution, the Patočka Archive has been moved back to Prague, but the Institut für Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna still keeps and maintains a mirror-archive as well as lively cooperation with Czech scholars.

The opening presentations were followed by a more technology-oriented speech on the “Hypergraph Solutions for Digital Meta-Ontologies” and feminist-oriented presentation about the presence of Brazilian women thinkers in the archives of the Institute of Brazilian Studies. Both of these talks enabled the audience to grasp the problem of the archive from a wider socio-technological perspective. Following them was a talk about another legendary philosophic archive, namely the Husserl Archives in Leuven. The topic of the presentation was the possibilities of tackling the notoriously rich and complex body of Husserl’s texts (which ranged from clusters of notes scribbled on toilet paper in stenography during the war to numerous “ideas” developed in non-systematic but complex manner. Next in line was a “case study” of modern tools developed for research in the Brenner-Archiv. The first day was capped by speeches oriented on the archiving literary texts, namely on Kafka’s posthumous manuscripts and Gombrowicz’s diaries.

The second day opened up with a presentation on the important Belgian Archives et Musée de la Littérature which, among other things, enabled the publication of several texts and translations that have been produced outside of the communist Czechoslovakia or “evacuated” behind the borders of the country from the inside. One of such texts whose publication was possible thanks to the services of the AML was Lubomír Sochor’s translation of Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness. After this Belgian-Czech excursion, the topic of “Avant-garde Archive” was opened, and with this topic the problem of the multi-medial nature of some archives arose. The Themerson archives, which were the main focus of the speech, contain not only written documents, but an equally important portion of visual and acoustic materials. How can one make sense of the interplay between these media and what is the role of each of them? Before the lunch break, a philosophic perspective was developed in a speech on Paul Valéry’s notion of the implexe as well as his concepts of virtuality and actuality which later played important role in the philosophy of G. Deleuze. The idea of archive as a virtual field of possible interpretations has been expounded. After the lunch, one of the high-points of the whole conference took place, namely a speech about the Indian modern logic and the new project of its digital archiving. New ways of digitally presenting works in Sanskrit have been described and the project of keeping the tradition alive presented.

The conference was closed by talks about the Indian PEN club archive and about the notion of the intellectual archive as dialogue art. The event marked the last phase of Benedetta Zaccarello’s long-term team project that sought to bring the notion of the archive up-to-date and the concluding discussion showed that there might be some possibilities of prolonging this important research on the horizon.


OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Claire Madl (27 février 2025). Report from international conference Histoire(s) d’archives. Forum Recherche du CEFRES. Consulté le 27 mars 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/13e5y