There is a specific passage in Jacques Derrida’s book Archive Fever which reads: ‘It is thus, in this domiciliation, this house arrest, that archives take place.’ Derrida states this after speaking about the place of residence of the archive in a physical sense and the power that the place of residence indicates - the power of the one who keeps the place of residence of the archives to interpret the archives. What I thought about while reading this passage was the residence of the archive in relation to hospitality. I began to see an idea that has not wholly formed but that I want to develop further.
The images that came to mind when I read this sentence were of an archive in a room, in a building. I saw the building from the street outside - there were people inside who were arranging folders. This was the archive’s home. These people had access to the archive, and they held the possibility of giving me access to it as well. They were the hosts and hostesses of the archive’s house. I imagined the archive taking place: people looking at the archive and recalling events and experiences, other people making the archive by taking objects out of daily use and inserting them into the archive.
‘It is thus, in this domiciliation, this house arrest, that archives take place.’ This was only one sentence in the book, and I took it as a beginning idea. I would like to focus on this sentence and what it provoked. I was interested in thinking about what could be the possible relationship between an archive and it’s place of residence, and hospitality. Hospitality means to welcome, to make comfortable, to make one feel ‘at home’. Hospitality requires a place (home, residence, space), a host or hostess who is in the position to give access to the place, and an ‘other’ who is welcomed into that place. Hospitality is shown by an action (or gesture) by the host or hostess which is received by the other.
The words ‘the place of residence of the archive’ do not indicate for me solely a building or a room, for example. These things I consider venues. A venue is a space in which something takes place. The place of residence of the archive also indicates the residence of the knowledge of the archive - the point from which meaning can be proposed. It is this point that Derrida speaks about as having power, which I believe gains this power from being able to propose the meaning of the archive while at the same time, and because of, having complete access to the venue of the archive.
The sentence also made me recall Irina Aristarkhova, and the writing and work that she has done about hospitality in relation to the feminine. Aristarkhova speaks about hospitality as making space for the other. I believe that hospitality can be used in this way as a feminist strategy. This means not only making a physical space for the other, but by making a space from which the other can speak. Thus hospitality in relation to an archive could mean making a space from which the other can speak within the place of residence of the archive. I do not think of this idea as something that I have solved. This idea indicates the direction of my research.