more reflections (archive/exile)

Last Thursday I wrote (at length – sorry!) about the idea of exile-as-ideal and its uses as a way of reflecting upon the self. Looked at in this way, a project on exile can focus not only on other people’s experiences of exile – though these are important –but also on one’s own aspirations to see ‘like an exile’. Today I thought I would write something about where I am now with the concept of ‘archive’. In particular, I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to compile an archive with the notion of exile-as-ideal in mind.

I *think* an archive has to be something collected or curated, and, for me, the interest of the concept lies in exploring what is collected and who curates it. The phrase ‘archive of exile’ opens onto a wide variety of possible dynamics here:

At one end of the spectrum, an ‘archive of exile’ might simply be an archive made by exiles. So, the fragments of ‘home’ that are carried into exile might be labelled in this way, as might relics of the process of displacement itself (the train tickets, diaries, maps, etc) . Here the archive consists of the remains of a certain kind of experience and it is curated by those who underwent that experience. And this might lead us to think about what ‘they’ preserved and why.

But another – very different – way to read the terms is to see an ‘archive of exile’ as an archive (of anything) made with the idea of exile-as-ideal in mind. Making an archive of exile in this sense requires one to turn the act of curation into a process of unlearning or getting outside. I might curate the material of my own life (photographs, memorabilia, etc) in this way, in which case the challenge would be not to present it as evidence for some authentic self of which I have privileged knowledge but to view it as if from the outside. And, as I wrote in the earlier post, I don’t think it is literally possible to do this in a voluntary way – the point, rather, would be to make the aspiration a part of the project in whatever way one could.

Increasingly it has struck me that your journey down the Mississippi involves both of these dynamics. (Obviously the journey isn’t only about archives of exile but, to the extent that it is, both versions of the ‘archive of exile’ seem to be in play.) At one level, the journey provides plenty of opportunity to engage with archives of exile in the first sense – the present traces of histories of displacement are everywhere along the route – but it also seems to have had a decentring effect that is evident in some of your blog posts.

In this context, I was very struck by a couple of postings that you made back in November (here and here) and that I commented on at the time (here and here). In the first post you talk about attending a black church and finding that not everyone is 100% pleased to see you, an experience that leads you to make this comment:

If I were a child of slavery and sharecropping and lynchings and all that, I’m not sure how much loving-kindness and openheartedness I would be ready to muster for every white stranger who walks in the door.

And in the second you talk about your experience of hearing an elderly man who ‘has lived and worked side by side with black people all his life’ use a term that ‘wound[s] [your] sensibilities’, something that also leads to a moment of self-reflection:

Let’s be real here: his daily life is in certain ways more integrated than the new music scene in New York City, uptown, downtown, or midtown. That’s part of the reason I’m not in New York right now, I’m trying to get some perspective on my own provincialism.

Both of these comments seem to me to have something of the texture that I am talking about. Both suggest a moment of finding oneself no longer at the centre of things, of getting ‘outside’ one’s situation. And so what I *think* I see here is a kind of relay between the archives of exile that are preserved along the Mississippi itself and the emergence of a particular mode of seeing, and hence of curating what one collects, that has exile as an aspiration.

It’s striking that this latter ‘mode of seeing’ comes in flashes – particular moments of experience – and I suspect that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to consolidate such moments of insight into a state in which one can live permanently, unless of course the catastrophe happens and one actually has to embrace exile as a literal reality. In an certain sense, it is a blessing not to have to see ‘like an exile’, whatever the clarity of that vision is. So how can that sense of momentary, exilic insight be built into the process of curation? In particular, how can it be built in in a way that reads neither as a form of posturing (look at me taking on the role of the exile) nor as an expression of liberal guilt (I feel so bad about all of this)?

I’ve spent quite a lot of time thinking about this since last summer and I’m beginning to develop some views about how it might be done through the medium I usually work in, i.e. writing. Would love to hear your thoughts…