The Death Drive

I continue to be interested in the reason behind archiving, which is good considering this to be the main subject of our class. I think it is easier to understand the reasons behind institutions and their attempt to preserve historical identity of the institution or to “keep” documents around that may be of interest or importance later as Ricoeur explains. It is easy to say that archives aid in some way to preserve an identity, personal or institutional. However, from reading Derrida and trying to understand Freud’s death/aggression/deconstruction drive, archiving can simply be understood as a being trying to externally prove/make sense of their existence- an ontological necessity. The death drive, as I understand it, is an innate urge to make sense of or master events that happened in the past, in the present. The death drive, as Derrida and Freud point out, goes directly against Freud’s Pleasure Principle, an individual’s constant attempt to take pleasure or make themselves happy, and there in lies part of the dilemma, that the death drive is not even a real principle. It just is. The death drive however is repetitious, and because it is something that is inherent, it is irresistible and persistent, and perhaps the only way to move forward is to consciously, or not, adhere to it. We make sense of things, by thinking about them, by re-reading them, re-interpreting them, re-experiencing them because in a sense we are all grappling and trying to understand something. I’m not sure if I understand the death drive in terms of the archive, other than, or if there’s more to it than the killing off of the reason or the truth of what we’re trying to recall or preserve in our mind. Maybe this is why Derrida and Freud say that there can be no archive “without a certain exteriority. No archive without outside,” because in our mind it faces destruction and distortion. Still something I’m thinking about. . .