Arkivfantasier

Begäret till ett dokumenterat förflutet som ett problem inför framtiden

Abstract

As most historians are well aware, an archive is always founded with the future in mind. Even though most archives do not exist for the historian, they have a bureaucratic function directed towards guaranteeing a “recollection” of a certain institutional organization and societal status quo. However, even the most radical and social constructivist of historians tends to foreclose this obvious notion in her quest for hermeneutical understanding. Through a critical analysis of a quote from the art exhibition “Lost and found. Queering the archive”, this article suggests a problematization of the common use and definition of the archive based on a radical (non-)historiography where neither the future, nor history, can serve as legitimate ontologies for research or identity claims.