From memory to archive

Posted on July 26, 2011
In his contribution to the Archival Platform's State of the Archives Panel at the Southern African Historical Society Conference in July 2011, Xolela Mangcu, who chaired the Sunday Times Alan Paton Awards judging panel, commented on the number of books such as Ronnie Kasrils', Unlikely Secret Agent and Jay Naidoo's, Fighting for Justice, that deal with issues of memory, and enrich the archive of our recent past.

Fellow panellist, and Archival Platform Steering Committee member, Verne Harris, who heads the Nelson Mandela Foundation Memory Programme, commented similarly on the emergence of a fresh wave of archival and memory work in South Africa, manifested in the plethora of new heritage projects and new institutions more or less dedicated to inheritance, the blossoming of autobiographies and biographies and the feverish marking of anniversaries.

All these projects draw on the archive and on memory.

In professional and popular discourse archives and memory are often held in an uncomfortable relation of separation. 'Archive' is commonly associated with notions of stability, durability, objectivity and evidence. Memory, on the other hand, is often described as fluid, transient, and subjective. While they are qualitatively different, they are inextricably linked: memory and archive intersect, converge and collide in complex ways; memory is always at play in the archive, and the archive in memory.

The question that the Archival Platform team has been pondering is: how does memory enter the archive - that is, how does it become part of the accumulation of preserved historical resources available to us individually and collectively to draw on to elucidate the past, illuminate the present and imagine the future?

In a wide ranging reflection the team reached consensus on a number of points: the act of exteriorising, or sharing, shifts memory from the private realm of the individual into the public domain. But, this does not necessarily mean that it enters the archive. As with records, memory enters the archive when it is both exteriorised and deemed to be of archival value. Deemed memories enter the archive because they are considered to be potentially valuable to us when we think about the past. As valued resources, they demand preservation so that they can be accessible to others, in the present and in the future.

Who deems memory as archive?

In some cases, memory is deemed through formal, authoritative institutional processes. The memories captured in testimonies gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) have been deemed as archive, not just by those who shared their experiences of gross human rights abuses with the TRC, but also by those who listened to the testimonies, documented and recorded them, and as well as those who have heard about the testimonies and call insistently for to access to them. This is evidenced in the growing number of publications and artistic performances, like Rewind, which draw on memories captured in the TRC archive.

Deeming happens in other ways too. All of those involved in projects that draw on memory, document personal experience or safe-guard the personal records of others play a powerful role in deeming memory as archive; constantly re-making and enriching the resources available to us to draw on when we think about the past

As its contribution to the festivities that gripped the country at the time of the 2010 FIFA Soccer World CupTM, the District Six Museum initiated a project, Fields of Play: football, memories & forced removals in Cape Town. A significant component of this project was the creation of forums for sharing and exchanging the personal memories which the curators deemed to be of particular significance in shaping the exhibition narrative. Once the exhibition has been dismantled the exhibition catalogue will provide a lasting record of both the process and the memories it evoked. It's an archival resource with the potential to enrich professional practice and our knowledge of the past.

Sometimes memories enter the archive because an individual makes a conscious choice to insert personal information into the public domain in the form of a publication, a performance or an artwork. Most of us have memories of growing up in a world we shared with significant adults - parents, grandparents, other relative or carers. In most cases our memories remain private, confined within the collective memory and the photograph albums of the people with whom we share a common past. Ufrieda Ho's childhood memories enter the archive as a personal record of the domestic life of a Chinese family living in Johannesburg in the late 20th century because she has chosen to document and share them in her book, Paper Sons and Daughters.

Archives and memory don't always intersect comfortably. Archives are often, rightly or wrongly, accorded an authority not always granted memory and memory may be unsettled or even contradicted by 'evidence' carried in other, more formal records. In a presentation at the recent Living with the Past conference, Madeleine Fullard explained the dilemma she faced in her dealings with the families of missing activists, when evidence unearthed by her team contradicted the versions of the past that the families of the victims remembered, or the 'authorised' narrative constructed by their communities.

Memory, as we know, may be free-floating, subject to reinvention, embellishment, manipulation and erasure. Even as a fragment caught in time memory complements the documentary record, filling gaps and breaking silences. Hugh Lewin's courageous and sensitive, Stones Against the Mirror: Friendship in the time of the South African Struggle, does just that, adding a new dimension to the archive of struggle literature. Dealing courageously and sensitively with the issues of friendship and betrayal, this book foregrounds the often marginalised contribution of young white South Africans to the broader liberation movement. While the bare facts of the story that Lewin tells can be pieced together from documents already in the archive, his finely articulated memories bring the record to life with raw, unforgettable honesty.

Archives are shaped by human agency. The choices we make are never neutral. The decisions we make about what to memories to preserve and what to discard are shaped by research interests, personal experiences, political and institutional agendas. When our ideas about what memories may or may not enter the archive are dominated by a single overbearing narrative, the archive closes in on itself. When we allow for the possibility of multiple voices, and invite memory in, the archives open. This is why we need to attend conscientiously and thoughtfully to what we deem as archive and to address the gaps and the silences, guard against valorisation neglect and secrecy.

The choices we make about what memories - and other records - enter the archive, and which do not determines our legacy to the next generation. If we want to create open conditions to speak about the past, to write history, we need to keep the archive open to memory.

Jo-Anne Duggan is the Director of the Archival Platform