With and Against the Archive

Archives are used not only as powerful tools of domination from above: They have also been used from below, as sites of resistance against erasure. Especially in postcolonial, postpartition, and postwar contexts, contemporary artists often navigate a tension between appropriating the position of the archivist as an emancipatory act and problematizing that very position from a transnational perspective. In doing so, they develop forms of memory work that liberate the archive from its national frame. Rebecca Hanna John sheds light on this understudied aspect of the archival turn in art, showing how Akram Zaatari, Jumana Manna, and Farah Saleh critically engage with archives in order to tell stories of transnational trajectories and entanglements.