Verne Harris

Stories and names: Archival description as narrating records and constructing meanings

The authors of this essay, coming from very different traditions and modes of archival discourse, explore together archival description as a field of archival thinking and practice. Their shared conviction is that records are always in the process of being made, and that the stories of their making are parts of bigger stories understandable only in the ever-changing broader contexts of society. The exploration begins with an interrogation of the traditional and ever-valid questions of the what and the why of archival description. Thereafter they offer a deconstruction of these questions and of the answers commonly proffered. In these sections of the essay their concern is with descriptive architecture, the analysis covering a number of specific architectures and including only oblique references to descriptive standardization. The concluding section attempts to draw out the implications of their analysis for endeavours—irrespective of the architectures being used — to define, and to justify, descriptive standards. Their call is not to dispense with standardization, but rather to create space for a liberatory approach which engages creatively the many dangers of standardization.

The archival sliver: Power, memory, and archives in South Africa

Far from being a simple reflection of reality, archives are constructed windows into personal and collective processes. They at once express and are instruments of prevailing relations of power. Verne Harris makes these arguments through an account of archives and archivists in the context of South Africas transition from apartheid to democracy. The account is deliberately shaped around three themes — race, power, and public records. While he concedes that the constructedness of memory and the dimension of power are most obvious in the extreme circumstances of oppression and rapid transition to democracy, he argues that these are realities informing archives in all circumstances. He makes an appeal to archivists to enchant their work by engaging these realities and by turning always towards the call of and for justice.

A Shaft of Darkness: Derrida in the Archive

This essay is not an account of Jacques Derrida’s position on, or delineation of, the archive. That would be to repeat the mistake of those who attempt to define postmodernism or deconstruction or Derridean thinking. Ultimately it is impossible to say what these things are. They are what they are becoming. They open out of the future. We can, at best, mark their movements and engage their energies. So the essay offers a shaft of darkness in all the harsh light of positivist discourse, a shaft aimed at Derrida in the archive. In taking aim I strive to be as open as possible to Derrida aiming at me.

Unveiling South Africa's nuclear past

Research into South African apartheid-era nuclear weapons history has been severely hampered by longstanding secrecy laws, not to mention the destruction of most policy records. The recent declassification and release of a 1975 Defence Force memorandum recommending the acquisition of nuclear weapons, however, shows that important documents have survived. This document sheds new light on military attitudes about nuclear acquisition, and about the extent of the South African-Israeli alliance. It confirms that Israel had offered South Africa missiles, and may have offered nuclear warheads as well. While the release of the 1975 document is promising, the Promotion of Access to Information Act, 2000 and the convening of an interdepartmental Classification and Declassification Review Committee in 2002 do not thus far represent a decisive shift toward greater openness on apartheid-era history. The states incentives for disclosure, controlled to avoid nuclear technology leakage, include the benefits of the lessons of the past to the global non-proliferation regime, contributing to South Africas prestige and foreign policy agenda, and enhancing the countrys democratic transparency.

‘Something is Happening Here and You Don't Know What it is’: Jacques Derrida Unplugged

I heard of Jacques Derrida’s death on the morning of 10 October 2004, standing at the reception desk of an Amsterdam hotel. Before me was the hotel manager, reading a phone message left for me by my partner in South Africa: ‘Derrida has died.’ He absorbed my blank expression for a few seconds, then said softly: ‘I’m very sorry for your loss.’ I knew that Derrida had not been well and, of course, I knew that he could not keep going forever. But instantly I seemed to be within the abyss which had yawned beneath me. And in the days thereafter I realised that the mourning which started long before his death would stay with me forever. It shouldn’t have taken ‘an event’ to bring this realisation—in 1998 I had heard Derrida making the argument that ‘the work of the archivist . . . is the work of mourning.’ It is not for me to mark Derrida’s position in the pantheon of 20th-century thinkers, nor to suggest his significance to intellectual endeavour in the broadest sense. Suffice it to note that: he was one of the most prominent public intellectuals of his era; he had a profound influence on a wide range of disciplines and professions; in the last decade of his life he spoke insistently to what we name archival discourses; and he is widely regarded as a key mover in what has been recognised by many as an archival turn in intellectual work. My aim in this essay is a more modest, dual one: to offer a personal appreciation of his work and its significance to that terrain we call archival.