I can’t help but think that I’m somehow bucking the norm on how archival research should be done. This is how I’ve been doing my research:
Go to the archives. Find some good stuff. “Good stuff” moves me towards a new direction. To follow it I leave the archive for the library. Get more stuff from the library. Stay home and read good stuff. Think. A lot. New avenues of ideas open up requiring another trip to the archives. Find more good stuff that requires I leave the archive.
So, I keep going to the archives with a solid idea of what I may need and end up discovering something totally different, but five times better. To give these discoveries the time they deserve I have to go elsewhere to follow up.
I think I may be messing with the politics of the archive. To get into the Archives here (yes, big A archives) you set up an appointment. The archivist knows ahead of time what you’re looking for and pulls the appropriate boxes. You show up at the Archive and there’s a cart with your boxes of materials waiting for you. At this Archive there are lockers for your stuff because you can’t take much into the research/reading room. I can bring in my computer, reading glasses, and writing materials. No liquids, food, phones, backpacks, etc. The room is climate controlled which means regardless of how warm it is outside I always have to bring a sweatshirt. I do my stuff and I leave. The most consecutive time I’ve spent there was three days and I was transcribing journals.
No one in the Archives seems to work the same way I do. All of them have been surrounded by mountains of boxes, through which they are determinedly pouring. The archivists are constantly coming in to check on them and get any copies of materials they may need. The second time, the three consecutive days, I was there the two other men in the room had clearly been at it at least eight hours a day for seven days. Two people who’ve been in the room are performers. and no, I wasn’t one of them. I mean they perform their research. The room is totally silent making any move and/or sound amplified. These two people expressed all of their research zest through their movement and sound. They were also the two who ordered the archivists around without hesitation. Their tone of voice was so superior. I felt like I was being given the entire story of their research process based on their gasps, moans, chuckles, and sighs. Then there were the bangs, the shuffling, the furious scribbling. Theatrical researching at its best.
All three times that I’ve left the Archives I feel like the archivists are somehow shocked that I’m leaving. Both of them have appeared flustered at my departure. They’ve also seemed shocked when I tell them I might be back. Each time they’ve been concerned that I didn’t find anything “good.” Do I need to spend two weeks here to find something good? Both have also asked me multiple times what it is exactly I’m looking for. Nevermind the fact that I’m in theatre. That seems so confusing that they don’t even mention it or try to ask about it.
As I’m writing this I begin to realize how historiographic research is different from history research. Now, for those who aren’t in my program, historiography is a very different concept for my particular program. In fact, I’ve yet to read a definition of historiography that really encapsulates all that we do. So, really it should have some kind of special … thing. It isn’t quite a big H Historiography. Maybe (h)istoriography? {Historio}graphy. Mmm. Like that one.
Anyway, as I’ve come to believe over the past two years, nothing is a fact. The information found in the archives is a record of certain events, people, bodies, but they are overlaid with the specificity of those particular spaces and times. Archival research, {historio}graphic research is as much about researching the structures that are holding a particular object, event, body up to the light of historic recognition as it is about the “thing.” This approach makes the “treasure hunt” metaphor useless. It’s more about finding some sort of “truth.” Truth is not a fact. And truth is way sticky which necessitates the rhizomatic approach that I’ve unconsciously been following. Truth requires that you cover your ass, your ethical ass anyway, by creating different and diverging paths, until you hit on the one that opens the event/object/body up in a way that speaks anew.
I still don’t know what {historio}graphy is, but it rules.
Recent Comments