Displaced, Un-placed, Re-placed

Abstract

Drawing upon the multilayered experience of the Armenian community in the US following the Armenian Genocide, this chapter proposes approaching the concept of displaced archives in terms of the affect and materiality of collections, particularly of photographs, that have been preserved by families across generations in the diaspora. It argues that such displaced family archives transmute after displacement into an affective and visual experience – an archival imaginary – that reminds community members today, and subsequent generations, of what is lost, irretrievable or unknown. It also introduces the archaeological concept of ‘negative evidence’ to underscore the evidentiary importance of archival voids relating to Genocide and displacement. In concluding, it proposes actions that could be taken by the archival field, in addition to ongoing scholarly, legal and policy work, to elevate the evidentiary importance of voids in archival collections and knowledge, to uncover additional knowledge of what happened during and after the Genocide and to render at least some ‘impossible archival imaginaries’ possible.

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