Reviewed Work(s): Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression by Jacques Derrida
Derrida tried to apply this general philosophical approach to the two concepts he found
relevant: the formal and authoritative recording of something in an archive, on the one
hand, and the scientific claims of Freudian psychology, on the other. Archivists might see
the connection as a leap from the sublime to the absurd. In Freud's mind, archives are
the authoritative place for all kinds of records; the final authority people can appeal to.
The contents of the archive are fair and accurate, and one must take what is found there
at face value. 1 Freud metaphorically borrowed the concept of the archive and regarded
the personal unconscious as the authoritative place for the true meaning of human
thought and experience. In fact, everyone's subconscious is a file that holds a critical
record of our personality. Just as we cannot question the authenticity of what we find in
the entire archive, we must accept evidence from the subconscious archive in solving
personality problems.
Nevertheless, both of these authorities are deceptive in Derrida's view because they
assume the stability of language and understanding that Derrida has rejected. There is a
risk in thinking of any archive as a fixed repository of ultimate truth. Because the language
of the record itself, whether documentary or personal, is unstable and must constantly
be deconstructed, we must doubt the evidence we find there. If we don't, we will continue
to suffer badly from archiving fever. 2 At the same time, we know that the collection and
preservation of archives inevitably diminish their value and intelligibility, whether
intentionally or unintentionally, and deflect retained memories in other directions. One
of the primary purposes of DRP is to make use of this destability to deconstruct the design
projects of the past two semesters, distort my fixed memory of them and generate new
thinking. This chapter focuses on breaking the separation and opposition of the two
design projects and tries to analyze the subtle influence of the Allochoraic Infrastructure
of Project 1 on the Beach Beneath the Street of Project 2 so as to break and recombine
these two subtly related themes into new thinking.
1
2
James M. O’Toole. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Archival Issues. Midwest Archives Conference, (1997): 87-90.
Jacques Derrida. Archive Fever: a Freudian Impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996).
Reviewed Work(s): Deconstructing History by Alun Munslow
British historian Alun Munslow, in his book "The Deconstruction of History", starting from
the background of" postmodern "this great doctrine of constructivism, refactoring, and
the deconstruction of history made detailed analysis, this paper introduces the so-called
postmodern historical issues of concern and debate, try their best to map out the
objective study of contemporary history of thought. Because the description of
reconstruction theory depends on historians' views on the use of evidence and
referentiality, especially on how they view the role of language and narrative as cognitive
elements in the reconstruction of the past, it is not easy to accurately depict it. 3
If we define an Archive as a historical record, its analysis can be compared with the
reconstructionist view of history. Reconstructionist historians place great value on
historical evidence but believe that asking for evidence alone is not enough. Evidence can
only reconstruct the real past if put into a larger frame of awareness -- the "context"，
which is often called "contextualization." This contextualization is not the same as the
"configuration" and the "emplotment" in the reconstructionism theory. The so-called
configuration and emplotment was the result of the subjective efforts of historians, a new
creation; as for "the context", Reconstructionist historians have set it merely the setting
of the scene, the laying out of the adjacent pieces of evidence, The other pieces in the
jigsaw."
3
Alun Munslow. Deconstructing History. (London: Routledge, 1997).
Reviewed Work(s): The Life of Plants, A Metaphysics of Mixture by Emanuele Coccia
Emanuele Coccia's The Life of Plants is the theoretical foundation of DP1 Allochoraic
Infrastructure. It can be said that DP1 is the exploration of plant philosophy in the book
derived from the concrete expression in Edinburgh. In the chapter "Root", the relationship
between plants and human beings is redefined. To be specific, plants are compared to
inverted human beings. 4 The control over soil shown by the extension depth of their
roots is a metaphor for the tradition of projecting political status by the altitude of
buildings in human political means. In Edinburgh, where urban development was closely
linked to imperial power, the presence of the Castle and Castle Rock was a clever
projection of this theory, which is precisely the reason for developing the New
Visualization from the topography of Edinburgh at the beginning of DP1. In fact, it is
through their roots that plants get most of their information about their state and their
environment; It also manages the risks and difficulties of underground life together with
other limited personal contacts through roots, which make the soil and the underground
world space for spiritual communion. This was the origin of the concept of Allochoraic
Infrastructure, connecting the city through the presence of plants and creating Spaces for
spiritual communication.
Coccia also said, "Plants are the metaphysical transfiguration of the rotation of the planet
around the Sun, the step that transforms a purely mechanical phenomenon into a
metaphysical event, " 5confirming the transformation and expression of the plant between
abstraction and concretion. In the process of DPR, Coccia's plant philosophy is an
essential theoretical basis for rethinking Edinburgh Ecological Urbanism. Its role does not
stop at spatial connection but extends to cultural and emotional connection.
4
5
Emanuele Coccia. The Life of Plants, A Metaphysics of Mixture. (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2019): 80-81.
Emanuele Coccia. The Life of Plants, A Metaphysics of Mixture. (Medford, MA: Polity Press, 2019): 93.
Reviewed Work(s): The Three Ecologies by Félix Guattari
Guattari’s achievement is to link three spheres of ecology – environmental, social, and
mental – into a set of interrelations he calls ecosophy, a term he coins, seemingly unaware
of the “deep ecology” movement or the ecosophy of Arnold Naess. His object of criticism
is what he calls Integrated World Capitalism (IWC) that, through a series of technoscientific transformations, has brought us to the brink of ecological disaster, causing a
disequilibrium of the world’s natural environment from which the Earth will take many
generations to recover, if at all. 6 Part of Guattari’s thesis is that the expansion in
communications technology, particularly the development of world telecommunications,
has shaped a new type of passive subjectivity, saturating the unconscious in conformity
with global market forces. Less often are we alerted to the dimension of social ecology
and its practical politics. What is not often recognized, if at all, is what Guattari calls mental
ecology: both how the structures of human subjectivity to which it refers, like a rare
species, are also under threat of extinction and how it underwrites an understanding of
environmental and social ecology.
It is in the realm of understanding human subjectivity in ecological terms that Guattari
has the most to offer, which is strongly influenced by the anthropologist Gregory Bateson.
The importance of Bateson’s argument is in criticizing the dominant “epistemological
fallacy” in Western thinking that the unit of survival, in the bio-taxonomy, is the individual,
family line, subspecies, or species, when the team of survival is “organism plus
environment.” The choice of the wrong team leads to an epistemological error that
propagates itself, multiplying and mutating, as an essential characteristic of the thought
system of which it is a part. The hierarchy of taxa leads to a conception of species against
species, Man against Nature – a view that has been reinforced by various ideologies and
movements, including Romanticism. 7
6
Félix Guattari. The Three Ecologies / Félix Guattari ; Translated by Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton ; Introduced by Gary
Genosko. (London: Continuum, 2008).
7
Michael Peters. "Globalization 2002: anti-globalization and Guattari's' The Three Ecologies.’" (2002).
Reviewed Work(s): Dust: The Archive and Cultural History by Carolyn Steedman
Carolyn Steedman’s new book, Dust, seeks to remind historians that much of their
research occurs in institutions that typically did not exist before the 18th century and
contains the messy remnants of human experience. Rather than serving as sources of
truth, they are repositories of stories historians use to construct meaning from the dust
and detritus of people's lives. In particular, state archives are linked to 19th-century
notions of political history that both limit and help scholars today. Steadman hopes that
scholars will put these limitations in perspective and that they will open up new ways of
writing history.
In her opinion, Derrida's "Archive Fever" is not about archives but continuous thinking
about historical works. Many repositories are bundled together, using the portmanteau
word "archive", which Derrida sees as limiting, denying and secreting them. In fact, the
Ark seems to have lost its connection with official document storage for administrative
reference, becoming a metaphor broad enough to encompass the whole of modern
information technology, including storage, retrieval and communication. 8 In this situation,
it is necessary to rethink the dusty history that has been archived. "The history of the
archive is a history of loss," says Antoinette Burton, but in this case, there is a tendency
to move beyond, or away from loss: in Derrida's text, there is very assiduous attention to
finding and discovering what is not there. 9 In Steedman's book, she seems to suggest
that archives are exciting and relevant today because it shows us how people use the past
to define themselves and others
8
9
Carolyn Steedman. Dust / Carolyn Steedman. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001): 3-4.
Antoinette M. Burton. “Thinking Beyond the Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the Domains of History (Gender,
Sexuality and the Colonial Legacy).” Social history (London) 26, no. 1 (2001): 60–71.
bliography
Books
Coccia, Emanuele. The Life of Plants, A Metaphysics of Mixture. Medford, MA: Polity Press,
2019.
Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever : a Freudian Impression. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1996.
Foucault, Michel. Archaeology of Knowledge. Westminster: Taylor and Francis, 2013.
Guattari, Félix. The Three Ecologies / Félix Guattari ; Translated by Ian Pindar and Paul
Sutton ; Introduced by Gary Genosko. London: Continuum, 2008.
Munslow, Alun. Deconstructing History. London: Routledge, 1997.
Steedman, Carolyn. Dust / Carolyn Steedman. Manchester: Manchester University Press,
2001.
Articles
Burton, Antoinette M.. “Thinking Beyond the Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the
Domains of History (Gender, Sexuality and the Colonial Legacy).” Social history (London)
26, no. 1 (2001): 60–71.
Ganaway, Bryan. Review of Steedman, Carolyn, Dust: The Archive and Cultural History. HGerman, H-Net Reviews. July, 2003. http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=7803
O’Toole, James M.. “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Archival Issues, pp. 87-90.
Midwest Archives Conference, 1997.
Peters, Michael. "Globalization 2002: anti-globalization and Guattari's' The Three
Ecologies'." 2002.