Archival Genres: Gathering Texts and Reading Spaces

Abstract

desktop and archive are synontmous (1) online we are in the archive, even if not 'for' an archive (1) derrida proposed archiving as a 'question of the future' context. producing writing and digital genres 'the archive is both a point of departure and destination for writing' 1 digital text isn't the revolution predicted 2 Are they genres, collections or archives, social spaces, or a combination thereof? 2 , emerging archival genres on the Web may represent textual and social spaces where new genres are taking form – genres that may, in time, replace or radically redefine the genres that appeared with print cultures, including 2 It is the inevitability of death, most importantly the destruction of memory itself, which guarantees the archive's existence ... the death drive is the basis upon which the conservation drive turns 2 foucaly's archive is regular and efficient, traumatic is derrida's ('feverish and fragmentary'). they are the same through 'an insistence upon the archive's link to narrative production' 2 the archival turn takes the archive as a speech act 3 which can be argued is a genre (Banting) - deconstructing both the book and the author the public has taken to the archive too, it is at the heart of tourism of origins and archive trailing 3 scrapbooking too is an archival practice, albeit derrided due to its demographics 3 the younger generation, not scrapbooking, are on the web 3 'they are products of archival practices: collecting, preservation, and ordering.' 3 this is not unique, however - 'everyday tetual practices' | this is a good point of acknwledgement, but the reconfiguration of the archive can go too far - not any old personal collection can be an archive 3 Eichorn says a true archive has an 'impact on the larger order of things' 3 collcetors ' do not revere tradition ... but rather destroy it' 'archives ... preserve signs of original contexts' 3 archives are more actively about construction people and relationships of power 3 things can be returned to but aren't necessarily fixed - will be reinterpreted - and can certainly be lost 3-4 blogs: 'temlates used to manag einformation' 4 'diary journal and essay' overlap 4 archival genres - ''defined by their copiousness rather than coherency' - are 'intermediary genres, or genres that offer a textual and social space where new genres can develop' 4 renaissance promoted the CPB; promptly the modern erased it 4 Ong argues CPBs were already antiquated at their peak use in intellectual history 4 academe accepted the decline of the CPB as fact and a nasty intellectual prosthetic (4) Eichhorn argues that digital stuff has brought questions of 'print culture's assumptions about intertectuality, authorship, and intellectual property' and as a transitional space 'has received renewed attention' (4) [turning to case study] 'his choice of passages reveal something about the social context in which he read and kept his commonplace book' 4 flower collecting lead to encyclopedias and CPBs as part of humanist history (5) CPBs kept in schools; arranged under rhetorical topics andmoral topics (5) Ann Moss: CPBS 'information retrieval system', Sawday and Rhodes: Renaissance computer (5) CPBs allowed readers to dwell amongst ideas and quotes towards generating new work. narrative is generated through the creation of CPB or archive (5) what distinguishes a genre from a collection or system of information management is the presence of a voice (5) genre-defying BUT they are read as their own Thing; 'they were rarely, if ever, read as mere heaps of tectual fragments culle from other sources' (5) CPBS as part of 'subject-centred genres' with journals letters etc despite lacking the grounding in reality (dates times names) of the others (5) ' commentaries. It is nearly always possible to gain insights into the personality and private life of the commonplacer from the textual fragments they chose to painstakingly recopy into their books.' (5) helped develop essays 'in the earlu modern period' (6) montaigne not a fan in theory but in practice uses his books to write; milton similarly bound to his CPB (6) authored-centered genres, such as the diary and essay, which appeared in the decades following the arrival of movable type suggests that the commonplace book may be best understood as a transitional genre that provided a space where new genres (and perhaps more importantly, a new breed of writers) could develop. (6) they can be 'the genre' or moving towards 'the genre' - transitional, liminal (6) blogs understood as a genre, shared with life writing (6) however this isn't fair as they're so hypertectual - linking to other things, sharing excerpts etc, linked to the public sphere (6) 'locate themselves within a larger community' (6) case study Silliman's blog is influential and has substantial impact on poetry and poetics publishing (7) it's ruminative; personal musings that may or may not have an audience (7) a work whose point is never to get anywhere, but always to bring the reader into the presentness of reading itself.” (Silliman in Eichorn: 7) blog as an archive of community history (7) influences viability od small presses (7) Silliman’s blog might suggest that if digital technologies have transformed poetics in the past decade, it is not exclusively or even predominately at the level of form but rather at the levels of circulation and reception. (7) allows for more experiment of form (8) it's the compilation of private sources into a repurposed form that make the commonplace book initially something crossing public/private (8) semi-public sphere (a space where individuals are free to voice private concerns and highly subjective standpoints to the public). (8) the archive is also a space of public/private breakdowns (8) 'archives are always already stories' (Burton) (8) archival genres may be understood as collections and spaces where readers and writers are permitted to dwell amongst documentary remains, crafting new narratives and new genres. (8)