Archive

Special issues:

Literature and Linguistics (Vol. 1 No. 2); Literature and Violence (Vol. 3 Nos. 1-2)

Women, Consumption and Popular Culture (Vol. 4 No. 1); Life, Community, and Ethics (Vol. 4. No. 2)

The Making of Barbarians in Western Literature (Vol. 5 No. 1); Chaos and Fear in Contemporary British Literature (Vol. 5 No. 2)

Taiwan Cinema before Taiwan New Wave Cinema (Vol. 6 No. 1); Catastrophe and Cultural Imaginaries (Vol. 6 No. 2)

Affective Perspectives from East Asia (Vol. 9 No. 2); Longing and Belonging (Vol. 10 No. 2, produced in collaboration with the European Network for Comparative Literary Studies)

Transatlantic Literary and Cultural Relations, 1776 to the Present (Vol. 11 No. 2). 

ABSTRACT

Human societies at various historical epochs have invented different techniques of replicating, retaining and continuing memories. The archive, as a kind of mnemonic technique, is a manifestation of the fact that memory always stands as the site of contestation for discourses, disciplines, and institutions; accordingly, personal memory may be sutured to or conflicting with public, collective memory. This paper explores the following major research questions: Is the contemporary era witnessing an “archive fever” or “mania for memorization”? Have the causes of liberating oppressed/repressed memories, atoning victims, and implementing justice been elevated to the status of ethical imperatives? How are forgetting and remembering, oppression and liberation, forgiveness and resentment, trauma and curing implicated with each other in the ontological, political-ethical, and techno-cultural dimensions? This paper seeks to answer these questions in light of the thought of Stiegler, Foucault, Ricoeur, Derrida and Agamben.

KEYWORDS: archive, forgiveness, memory, witness, justice, forgetting 

摘 要

人類在不同的階段裡發展出不同的保存、延續與複製 記憶的技術。檔案之為一種記憶技術,顯示出吾人宣稱為 本體存在與歷史真實不可或缺的一部分的記憶,實為諸多 論述、學科、體制與權力競逐之場域,個人記憶也因而與 集體記憶縫合,但兩者之間卻也常處在矛盾衝突狀態。本 文所關注的問題是:當前包括台灣在內面對「歷史創傷」的 時代氛圍裡,是否充斥「檔案狂熱」、「悼念狂熱」或者「回 歸根源」之潮流?解放受壓迫/抑的記憶、為受難者平反、尋 求歷史正義是否成了當前不言可喻的道德律令?然而,在 遺忘與記憶、壓迫與解放、寬恕與嫌惡、創傷與療癒之 間,是否有諸多本體存在、政治倫理與科技文化等層面上 有待釐清的錯綜複雜關係?本論文將透過傅柯、呂克爾、 德希達與史提格勒等哲學思想,針對這些問題提出一些可 能的思考路徑。

關鍵詞:檔案、寬恕、記憶、見證、正義、遺忘