The rhetorical force of “global archival memory”: (Re)Situating archives along the global memoryscape

ABSTRACT

This essay engages the possibilities and pitfalls of UNESCO’s Memory of the World program for fostering “global archival memory.” Archives function as rhetorical weapons for both political control and social justice within national and regional contexts. The constitution of global archival memory shifts archives’ borders beyond nation-bound contexts, creating space for contention, deliberation, and debate within a presentist transnational arena. Approaching archives as symbols capable of marshaling cross-cultural identifications furthers memory scholars’ conceptions of transnational memories and communities. It responds to rhetorical scholars’ calls to further engage archives, while drawing on archival studies, memory studies, and rhetorical theories of memory.

KEYWORDS:

• UNESCO
• Memory of the World
• transnational memory
• rhetoric
• social justice

Acknowledgements

Matthew Houdek is a doctoral student in the Department of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa. He would like to thank Darrel Wanzer-Serrano and Kendall Phillips for the support over the past few years, and to the editors and two reviewers for their helpful comments and encouragement in continuing to develop this essay. A version of this piece was presented at the 2016 Rhetoric Society of America Conference in Atlanta, Georgia.