Performing the Past in Electronic Archives: Interdependencies in the Discursive and Non-discursive Ordering of Institutional Rememberings / Lightfoot

Annotation

The article is interesting for its use of framing human and computer memory and its discussion of email. Using Heiddigger as a synthetic theory, the authors ask what happens to historical consciousness in the time of modern technology? How is the past deployed in the use and archiving of email in corporate settings. Cognitive science subscribes to the notion of memory as a container for memories. We've modeled information technology memory similarly. The term ‘memory’ is used to refer, both literally and figuratively, to a computer’s capacity for storing and accumulating information. BUT authors suggest reframing the concepts of memory to that of a more psychological perspective. (e.g. Edwards & Potter, 1992; Middleton & Edwards, 1990). They suggest that memory occurs while communicating. It is something that speakers perform rather than simply possess. These performances are informed by cultural understandings of what is to be counted as adequate and felicitous recall. Remembering is, then, a social act, a way of accomplishing some activity in the present through invoking the past in an appropriate and skilled manner. Any memory is thus subjective. A truthful memory is one that matches other "proper" versions or if no other version exists, then it follows a certain logic. Technology adds a contextual layer to the memory in its ability to add validity/truth, i.e., documentation. Email serves in this manner as an archiving device. Through analyzing email, the authors attempt to show a non-discursive side to remembering. The authors note that it may look as if they're giving too much weight to the non-discursive form of archiving, but they say that non-discursive and discursive remembering and forgetting are intertwined.

Citation
Lightfoot, Geofrey, Steven D. Brown, and David Middleton. 2001. Performing the Past in Electronic Archives: Interdependencies in the Discursive and Non-discursive Ordering of Institutional Rememberings. Culture & Psychology 7, no. 2:123.

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Performing the Past in Electronic Archives: Interdependencies in the Discursive and Non-discursive Ordering of Institutional Rememberings / Lightfoot