[Bilimsel Haber] CFP- The Empire of Archives, Ab Imperio

[Sule Tarakcioglu]

CFP- The Empire of Archives, Ab Imperio

Posted by: Sergey Glebov <sglebov at smith.edu>

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 brining 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, then 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
group's 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
archive's historical documents.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 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
office at abimperio.net

Cahiers du monde russe: Russie, Empire russe, Union soviétique et
États indépendants
stanzian at idhe.ens-cachan.fr


Distrib. by: Central-Eurasia-L - Announcement List for Central Eurasian
Studies