Difference between revisions of "Processing the Past"

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Processing the Past : Contesting Authority in History and the Archives
Author(s)	William G. Rosenberg
Country	United States
Language	English
Series	Oxford Series on History and Archives
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Publication date	2011
Pages	272 pages
ISBN	978-0199740543
OCLC Number	649827268
LC Classification	CD950 .B56 2011

Blouin and Rosenberg Processing the Past: Contesting Authority in History and the Archives discusses how historians and archivist diverged down different intellectual paths after an initial development that was mostly parallel during their earlies years. Processing the Past explains the origin of the archival professions within the field of history and early symbiotic relationship between historians and archivist. This book also chronicles, what Blouin and Rosenberg see as the divergent paths between historians and archivist, with archivist become more aligned with librarians, and historians becoming less and less reliant on the traditional archival repository. For these authors the central issue that concerned them was:

"The various linguistic, cultural, and other “turns” that have recently shaped new historical understanding have been complemented in the archival community by a sharp turn from historiographically based authorities themselves, in a variety of forms, to that more strictly archival or based on practices of records management.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg, 6.</ref>

In concluding this book, Blouin and Rosenberg call for a coming back together or reconciliation between historians and archivist. The authors do provide a critique of postmodern histographical traditions, and lay blame for these in creating a dived between archivist and historians. This argument and line of thinking is one of the shortcomings of this book but taken with some of the other points made, Blouin and Rosenberg present a compelling case about the intertwined nature of the archival and historian professions.

The book is structured into two main parts. Part One “The Emergence of the Archival Divide” provides a broad historiographical analysis of general trends in the field of history as well as a discussion of the development of the archival profession. This section covers movements such as the Annales school, the impact of Leopold Van Ranke, and Derrida and how historiographic movements connected and disconnected archivist and historians. This section is also discussing how trends in the archival profession, namely that the advent of machine-readable catalogs, standardization, and the new demands of bulk, led to archivist to form their own professional identity more closely aligned with librarianship. Section two “ Processing the past”, continues to discuss the increasing divide between archivist and historians through discussion of the social history and contested authority in archives. This section ends with a more significant focus of archives and technology and concludes in chapter 11 by asking whether or not archivist and historians can bridge this divide between them.

The construction of the main argument focuses on explaining how the formation of early archives and how these first archival repositories were influenced by historians. The author’s state, when discussing initial archival creation in the United States, “For archivist engaged in preserving a historical record, there was a fundamental reliance on historical ‘authority,’ in the appraisal and acquisition of these document.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg, 33.</ref> This idea of ‘historical authority’ and its relationship to archives is explained through a discussion of the development of the discipline of history from the writings of Ranke to the establishment of the American Historical Association. The authors found that archivist and historians were working in tandem from the beginning and relying on one another to perform their work. They discuss the early founding of archives by historians or influenced by historians in the United States in Masscheust and Alabama to demonstrate the connection. This point is further supported by their discussion of the founding of the Society of American Archivist from a committee that originated within the American Historical Association. Where they clearly state how archivist and historians were considered in sync was “the work of the historian and archivist converged on that conception of the authentic document as a source and evidence.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg,31.</ref> This understanding of historical sources was the fundamental point of an agreement between archivist and historians.

According to Blouin and Rosenberg, the primary separation happened for several reasons. These include changes in how the advent of social memory and the cultural turn of history, which further affected historians and archivist alike and its effects on the profession. Blouin and Rosenberg deal with issues of social memory as they relate to more prominent narratives, individuals conceptions of history and even identity politics.<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg,99, 107.</ref> In a wide-ranging discussion about the impact new forms of history, constructing new bodies of the source material, and of trying to determine what a usable past could be, Blouin and Rosenberg found that “Archives and archivist, are situated at a central and contested of connection between history and memory.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg,101, 115.</ref> This contested realm of the archives leads to historians rejecting archives and archivist forging new paths for their profession.

Another disconnect between the two fields as related by the authors deals with how historians view sources, and how archivists saw their profession. For the authors, “The archival divide between historians and archivists is thus deeply conceptual separation base on different readings of the relation between the past and present, and on how pasts can and should be literally and figurately processed.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg, 101, 115.</ref> The authors found that each group began to create different frameworks for dealing with the past. The archivist found technology and library science as a means to deal with historical documents, while historians further expanded their understanding of what could be used as source materials.

Blouin and Rosenberg also lament the disconnection between archivist and historian as seen through the questioning the validity of sources and the contested power of archives. Blouin and Rosenberg lament a time passed where the historian relied on the archives as the primer source and authority for research materials. They found that this archival authority had been questioned by postmodernist, naming Derrida as a prime example, and found it concerning. The authors even “the concept of authority, moreover, has itself been a controversial issue in these discussions.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg, 80.</ref> They see this turn from archival authority as a significant setback in the relationship between archivist and historians.

The last issue the author's address is both a call for reconciliation and a speculative exercise in how historians and archivist can bridge this divide between them. Mostly the authors felt that both archivist and historians need to understand the work of each other, with archivist returning to the scholarship of history and historians understanding the archival profession. They felt that “communities of scholars would need to take on a much larger role in the processes of providing access.”<ref>Blouin and Rosenberg, 215.</ref> In this, the authors arrive at their most compelling point, that a new community of engagement should be created between archivist and historians that approach the technical, social and other challenges facing our once aligned professions.

In summary, Processing the Past provides a primer on the evolution of the archival profession and how changes in the history field both paralleled then diverged from the archivist. The authors lament this disconnection between the two fields and long for a day when they were more closely related to blaming some of the historiographic trends for this problem, which is the weak point of this work. Despite this, the general call present by Blouin and Rosenberg for historians and archivist to understand each other's professions better is a worthwhile endeavor.

References

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