Retracings

After this last chapter, I don’t necessarily know if I have more questions about the archive. It’s like we’ve been saying all along, that archives carry the bias of the person or people that created them based on their aim or goal for compiling information in the first place. I continue to be interested in how artists use and challenge the archive in their work, as they are essentially challenging authority. Although, it seems that by working with the archive they are creating a new archive based on what it is they wish to convey that the original archive does not. And so, the process of archivization and I think, the death drive, begins anew. The Atlas Group and Raqs New Media Collection both comment and even create fictional archives in their works, based on challenging the notion of not the archive itself, but the authority of the people that compiled archives.

One thing that does leave me with more questions, and I realize that this may be a bit off topic, but I don’t understand or can’t seem to wrap my mind around deconstruction as a method of writing. Why would you use such a method as a writer if you have a message you want to convey to readers? The only plus that I can see right now about deconstruction is that meaning is found through the search for meaning. Spivak and Derrida use this method and I’m wondering how successful it is as a means of communication, unless as I mentioned before, it is through the search for meaning that one discovers meaning. Come to think of it, this sounds similar to finding identity amidst an archive.

The one refreshing aspect I found about his week’s readings was “imagination.” It seems as if imagination is inevitable and innate just like the death drive and archivization. Imagination allows the viewer it question what is known by imagining what is absent.