Book Review

Critical addresses: the archive-in-practice.

Abstract

In the same year that the TRC hearings commenced, Jacques Derrida’s Archive fever: a Freudian impression (1996) was translated into English from French.1 The work offers a rich and inclusive analysis which proffers the notion that the relationship between the archive and its contents is fluid – the structure, formulation and functioning of the archive are informed by its contents as well as external bodies of knowledge. To this end, the archive’s objectivity, authorship and authenticity are in doubt. Nearly two decades on, the archive is still a primary source of investigation across various fields of inquiry including archaeology, anthropology, philosophy, literary studies and visual art.