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Archives, authority, aura: modernism’s archival turn

journal contribution
posted on 2023-05-22, 05:02 authored by Naomi MilthorpeNaomi Milthorpe
The modernist scholar increasingly engages in work in the archive. Yet, as much as it is a place of work, it seems also to function domestically, as Jacques Derrida remarks: the archive is “house, a domicile, an address” (2). An address for what? Janine Utell argues the archive is “the resting place of the authority of the author, […] the site of origins, order, stability, history” (53-54). At the same time as archives are sites of satisfyingly solid physical slog and of a stabilizing foundation in materiality, they also seem to prompt dream-work. Part of the enchantment of the archive emerges from its multiple narrative possibilities, as Alice Yaegar Kaplan suggests: will the researcher find herself in an epic, a gumshoe novel, or an adventure story? The mixed generic qualities of archive work “cross over, multiply, intertwine,” says Kaplan (102). As a result, archive work proffers complex and multiple affective responses and possesses, as Philip Larkin once stated, a “magical value.” (99)

Funding

The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens

History

Publication title

Papers on Language and Literature: A Journal for Scholars and Critics of Language and Literature

Volume

55

Pagination

3-14

ISSN

0031-1294

Department/School

School of Humanities

Publisher

Southern Illinois Univ

Place of publication

Box 43-A, Edwardsville, USA, Il, 62026-1434

Repository Status

  • Restricted

Socio-economic Objectives

Literature; Understanding Europe’s past

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