ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with not only what we find in the archives of difficult events, but in what is missing, and through what power and limits. It is about how stories about difficult events, histories, and losses are told, held, and kept safe. The book focuses on the search for particular missing stories in the archive, the tidily numbered and filed chaos, and the horror at finding both certain absences and certain objects illustrate the trouble with the archive as a decisive place of power and a shaper of narratives. It discusses archives related to divided memories, traumatic histories, personal sorrow, conflicted narratives, and sites of conflict and violence. The book includes collections—of a museum or an institution, for example—as archives, as they tell us the selected and the preserved story of a place, time, or subject through their holdings.
