Wild archives

Abstract

The article examines the scholarly travels of Enno Littmann (1875–1958) in Syria and Ethiopia as providing an alternative model for understanding ‘the archive’ as a theoretical topos in connection with the production of historical knowledge in the 19th century. The argument seeks to dismantle the nexus between classification and modern European statehood – here discussed with the help of Derrida’s Mal d’archive – that has come to dominate debates on the epistemological place of the archive. Instead, the article seeks to sketch an understanding of practical work on plural, collected and textual records of the past in terms of epistemic situations displaying a high degree of spontaneity, thus ‘wildness’. For this purpose, reading procedures, archival material and normative orders purportedly regulating archival work are scrutinized in turn for signs of wildness.

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