Fragmentation of memories: an epistemological reflexion over classification and interpretation in sound archives

• Autor(a) principal: Duarte, Andreia
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/35710
• topic: Sound archive; Classification; Interpretation; Memory fragmentation

Archives, like museums and libraries, have been classified since the early 2000’s as memory institutions due to their shared aim for the preservation of collective memory. This classification of the archive is closely related to the concept of lieu de memoire as proposed by Nora, if we treat the archive – albeit superficially – as a site of material and/or immaterial memory where it can be evoked and preserved. Formerly, archives were conceptualized as places of domiciliation of power and authority, of privilege and consignment – also through the acts of putting together “things” and interpreting them. This affirmation was also true in the case of sound archives when they were created in the beginning of the 20th century. A sound record, be it material or immaterial, represents a crystallized moment in time, an already fragmented memory. When institutionalized, it becomes inherently submissive to a set of processes, rules and interests that may fragment it even more and/or conceal information and knowledge. With this communication I seek to provide an epistemological reflexion on the fragmentation that occurs when a sound record is transferred to an institution and becomes the target of two interdependent tools used in the management of institutionalized objects: interpretation and classification. These two tools, which are truly unavoidable in the preservation of memory especially in the frame of the digital age, depend on several variables, including the positions of enunciation of the agents interested in them and the adopted systems of classification, generating acts of “artificial” or “natural” classification, as conceptualized by Bourdieu, or, in other cases, incurring in hyper classifications.