Archive and Keeper of Memory: Dissolution from one into another

Since the dawn of human consciousness, we have been infatuated with those who are keepers of memory. From the Grecian Mnemosyne to Lois Lowry’s Giver, these guardians have long been placed on a pedestal; the goodness of their self-sacrificial deeds immortalised, and the narrative of their unimaginable suffering romanticised.

In the real world, however, the boundaries between archive and keeper thereof are blurring. As one dissolves into the other, we must ask:

What is the archive composed of?

Whom, and what purpose does it serve?

And finally, what determines its value and authenticity?

Part One, or: What is the archive composed of?

As with most questions concerning what a thing is, the most obvious approach is to first, scrutinise its definitions, and secondly, the connotations it stirs up within us. As you will see in this section, the language which is used to describe the archive is concerned with issues of originality and uniqueness.

To begin with, the essence of the archive, whether it “connotes a place (‘a repository for documents’ or a collection (‘records so kept’)” (Oxford English Dictionary, as cited in Helton 2021), is deeply tied to the…