Dear Folks,
We are back in our regular classroom on Thursday, to discuss Chapter 1 of Carolyn Steedman's Dust and (coincidentally) Chapter 1 of Randall Jimerson's Archives Power. Metaphors abound in the early portions of each chapter (and, in fact, Mattias makes a cameo appearance in Jimerson's pages).
Give yourself time to dwell in each chapter -- time to work through their claims, to annotate terms that are new or unfamiliar in their usage, and to consider the challenge in each chapter. Someone or some idea or some activity or some perspective is being challenged in each piece, and that's part of what we will discuss on Thursday.
It might help us to keep in mind that Steedman's notion of "archive" is bound up in the material, more specifically in Derrida's Mal d'archive ("archive fever"), while Jimerson's is bound up in the social.
Overarchingly, we'll use Thursday's class to close up our introduction to Archives and the Archive, and I'll ask you to tell us where you are in your thinking. In preparation for that, please mark 2 long passages in each chapter that are noteworthy enough to launch our discussion.
Looking forward to Thursday,
-Dr. Graban
