Something She Called a Fever Michelet, Derrida, and Dust (Or, in the Archives with Michelet and Derrida)

• Published in: Archives, Documentation, and Institutions of Social Memory p. 4
• Main Author: Carolyn Steedman
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: University of Michigan Press 02.03.2011
• Subjects: Agricultural products; Agriculture; Animal products; Anthrax; Anthropology; Applied anthropology; Archives; Bacterial infections; Behavioral sciences; Biological sciences; Body temperature changes; Business; Central nervous system diseases; Chives; Consumer goods industries; Cultural anthropology; Cultural institutions; Deconstructionism; Diseases; Disorders; Environmental disorders; Epistemological contextualism; Epistemology; Fever; Government; Government officials; Gram positive bacterial infections; Health sciences; Herbs; Industrial sectors; Industry; Infections; Judges; Judicial officers; Leather industry; Leathers; Magistrates; Manufacturing industries; Medical conditions; Meningitis; Nervous system diseases; Occupational disorders; Philosophy; Plant products; Political science; Symptoms
• ISBN: 047211493X; 9780472114931
• DOI: 10.3998/mpub.93171.5

Archive fever, indeed? I can tell youall aboutarchive fever. What (says a voice prosaic and perverse; probably a historian’s voice) is an archive doing there anyway at the beginning of Jacques Derrida’sMal d’archive? Here, in its opening passages, Derrida shows us thearkhe, which he says is the place where things begin, where power originates, inextricably bound up with the authority of beginnings. In the brief account that Derrida gives us of the operation of the Greek city-state, its official documents are shown to be stored in thearkheion, the superior magistrate’s residence. There thearchonhimself,