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Carolyn Steedman - From Dust

Archives and Cultural History

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arteenlacalle
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229 views13 pages

Carolyn Steedman - From Dust

Archives and Cultural History

Uploaded by

arteenlacalle
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ENCOUNTERS cultural histories Series editors: Roger Cooter Harriet Ritvo Carolyn Stedman Bertrand Taithe (Over the past few decades cultural history has become the discipline of encounters. Beyond the issues raised by the ‘linguistic turn, the work of theorists such as Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, Michel Poucault or Jacques Derrida has contributed to the emergence of cultural history as. forum for bold and creative exchange. This series proposes to place enounters—human, intellectual and disciplinary at the beart of historicd thinking. Encounters will include short, innovative and theoretically informed books from all fields of history. The series will provide an arena for exploring new and reassembled historical subjects, stimulating perceptions and re- perceptions of the past, and methodological challenges and innova- tions; it will publish at history’s cutting edge. The Encounters series ‘will demonstrate that history is the hidden narrative of modernity. Dust The Archive and Cultural History o~ CAROLYN STEEDMAN ® Rutgers University Press New Brunswick, New Jersey Fict published in the Unit States 2002 by Rutgers Univesty Press, New Brunswick, New Jersey Fist publ i Gest Britain 2008, by Manchester University Press Oxia Road, Manchester N13 INR, UK np swwnanchestersniversityprest cok Copyright © Carct Steeéman 2001 jon Data and Data area Libary of Congress Cataloging Pa toh Library Cataloging i Publi lable upon request [SBN 08135 30866 cs 08135 3047 &paperbock Allright reserved No part ofthis bock maybe reproduced or tied in any form aby any means, electronic or mee! by any information storage and retieval system, without ‘writen permision rom the publ, Please contact Rutgers University Prat 100 Joye Xiimer Aveave, Picataway, N} 08854-8099. The only exception to this prohibition i ir tue as defined by US, copyright aw. Contents Acknowledgements Preface 4 Inthe archon’s house 2. ‘Something she called a fever’: Michelet, Derrida and dust The magistrates The space of memory: in an archive ‘To Middlemarch: without benefit of archive What a rag rug means ‘About ends: on how the end is different from an ending 8 Thestory of the dust Bibliography Index page vii 7 38 66 89 12 142 157 i 192. 27: Sigmund Freud, Jokes and their Relationship to the Unconscious, Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund cw? ‘Fraid, 8 (London, Hogarth Press, [1905] 1960). See especially ‘Jokes and the Species of the Comic} 181-236, ‘something she called a fever’: 28 Hayden White, Metahistory. The Historical Imagination in Nineteen century Europe (Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins Univers Press, 1973), pp. 163-90. Sigmund Freud, ‘Humour, p. 166. Michelet, Derrida and dust ate) Mick exevres Completes, IV) Ancuive Fever, iNpeep?] cantell you allabout Archive Fever! Actually, quite apart from anything written by Derrida, or anything reflected on by his critics, Archive Fever comes on at night, long after the archive has shut for the day. Typically the fever—~more accurately, the precursor fever — starts in the early hours of the morning, in the bed ofa cheap hotel, where the historian cannot get to sleep. You can: aot get to sleep because you lie so narrowly, in an attempt to avoid contact with anything that isn't shielded by sheets and pillowcase. ‘The first sign then, is an excessive attention to the bed, an irresistible anxiety about the hundreds who have slept there before you, leaving their dust and debris in the fibres ofthe blankets, greasing the surface ofthe heavy, slippery counterpane. The dust of others, and of other times, fills the room, settles on the carpet, marks out the sticky pas- sage from bed to bathroom. ‘This symptom — worrying about the bed ~ is a screen anxiety. What keeps you awake, the sizing and starch in the thin sheets c

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