ABSTRACT

Drawing together many stories from the archives of difficult events and volatile histories, Archiving Loss: Holding Places for Difficult Memories asks how we might cut and walk a path for memory, loss, and silence in the archive. The difficult events discussed in this book include state responses to refugees, events of genocide, alongside other less documented pockets of trauma, violence, and loss. This book describes the archives whose language and logic have shaped our ways we remember and respond to difficult events and the ways in which we expect memory and loss to be coherent, credible, and lead to clear conclusions. In asking what is missing and what is found in the archives of difficult events this book argues for the necessity of looking more closely at other ways of remembering loss and archiving memory.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

Pouring memory

part I|50 pages

The archive

chapter 1|16 pages

Power in the archives

chapter 2|13 pages

Expectations in the archive

chapter 3|12 pages

Archives and difficult events

part II|30 pages

Archive fever

chapter 4|9 pages

Counting to discount

chapter 5|16 pages

The language and logic of the archive

part III|36 pages

Remembering in the archive

chapter 6|17 pages

Archival filters

chapter 7|4 pages

The archive as a gate opener

chapter 8|12 pages

Loss and the archive