Archives in Transition: Collective Memories and Subaltern Uses

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In the field of memory studies, there is broad consensus that questioning the interwoven national and transnational collective memories can strengthen democratic structures. These conflicts around memory processes reveal the central importance of archives, especially when dealing with experiences and knowledges of subalternized groups, historically excluded from public debates. Archives, the central object of this project, allow new elaborations of historical and social models, but also provide a basis for rethinking the cultural heritage of societies. The TRANS.ARCH project focuses on a relatively unexplored dimension of this field, namely, the different political, judicial, cultural and artistic uses of archives deployed by collectives of migrants and sexual dissidents in Europe and in Latin America. In connection with this, medial, technical, cultural and aesthetic aspects of the digitalization of knowledge are examined, since the transition to digital archives is changing the relationship between public and private. In the current phase of globalization, in which times and geographic spaces are fragmented and newly networked, the processes of archiving also changes the apparatus of written cultures. TRANS.ARCH is innovative in that it will create a network of experienced and young researchers that will examine current functions and uses of archives in the context of crises associated with globalization. While the transatlantic composition of the consortium of institutions involved in the project will allow for a comparative analysis of the European and Latin American contexts, the innovative focus on the uses of archives by migrants and sexual dissidents will demand that researchers create a new transdisciplinary approach with a strong gender perspective. This approach will open the way for insights into the transitional condition of archives, both in terms of their present political and cultural uses, and in terms of their changing theoretical status.