[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values ascribed to the archive's historical documents.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