Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory
Archives, records, and power: The making of modern memory
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档案、记录和权力：现代记忆的形成
DOI：
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发表时间：
2002
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Terry Cook
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
J. Schwartz;Terry Cook
本文是《档案学》两个专题中的第一个专题的一般性介绍，主题是“档案、记录和权力”。档案作为机构，记录作为文件，一般被学术界和其他用户以及社会普遍视为被动资源，可用于各种历史和文化目的。自世纪中期以来，历史学家在追求新的科学史的过程中，需要一个中立的事实档案库。直到最近，档案工作者们还不得不赞美他们自己的公正、中立和客观的职业神话。然而，档案是由有权势的人建立的，以保护或提高他们在社会中的地位。通过档案，过去被控制。有些故事是特权故事，有些故事则被边缘化。档案管理员是这个故事的组成部分。在记录保存系统的设计中，在评估和选择所有可能的记录中的一小部分进入档案中，在随后不断变化的档案描述和保存方法中，以及在其交流和使用模式中，档案工作者不断重塑，重新解释和重新发明档案。这代表了对记忆和身份的巨大力量，对社会寻求其核心价值观的证据的基本方式，它来自哪里，它将走向何方。因此，档案馆并不是旧东西的被动仓库，而是社会权力进行谈判、竞争和确认的活跃场所。档案、记录和档案管理员的权力不应再被归化或否定，而应接受至关重要的辩论和透明的问责。
This article serves as the general introduction by the guest editors to the first of two thematic issues ofArchival Science that will explore the theme, “archives, records, and power.” Archives as institutions and records as documents are generally seen by academic and other users, and by society generally, as passive resources to be exploited for various historical and cultural purposes. Historians since the mid-nineteenth century, in pursuing the new scientific history, needed an archive that was a neutral repositories of facts. Until very recently, archivists obliged by extolling their own professional myth of impartiality, neutrality, and objectivity. Yet archives are established by the powerful to protect or enhance their position in society. Through archives, the past is controlled. Certain stories are privileged and others marginalized. And archivists are an integral part of this story-telling. In the design of record-keeping systems, in the appraisal and selection of a tiny fragment of all possible records to enter the archive, in approaches to subsequent and ever-changing description and preservation of the archive, and in its patterns of communication and use, archivists continually reshape, reinterpret, and reinvent the archive. This represents enormous power over memory and identity, over the fundamental ways in which society seeks evidence of what its core values are and have been, where it has come from, and where it is going. Archives, then, are not passive storehouses of old stuff, but active sites where social power is negotiated, contested, confirmed. The power of archives, records, and archivists should no longer remain naturalized or denied, but opened to vital debate and transparent accountability.