Across the Great Divide: Archival Discourse and the (Re)presentations of the Past in Late-Modern Society

Authors

  • Bernadine Dodge

Abstract

This article examines the implications for archival discourse in a late-modern world of technoculture featuring the digital re-mediation of documents, texts and images. Issues such as provenance, authority, memory and evidence are affected in a variety of ways once documents and photographs are detached from their original settings and enter cyberspace. Many theorists of the postmodern decry the effects of speed and time distortions associated with the age of the machine. Many also regret the passing of the autonomous, grounded individual characterized by an inherently stable self. This article suggests that there may be advantages to loosening some of the ties that bind us to traditional ways of looking at archival practices in late-modern society.

Author Biography

Bernadine Dodge

Bernadine Dodge has been University Archivist at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario since 1982. She has an M.A. in History and an Ed.D. in History and Women’s Studies, both from the University of Toronto. She has served on the Ontario Council of Archives and is a Past President of the Association of Canadian Archivists. She researches and writes in the area of women and the law in nineteenth-century Ontario.

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Published

2002-05-01

How to Cite

Dodge, Bernadine. 2002. “Across the Great Divide: Archival Discourse and the (Re)presentations of the Past in Late-Modern Society”. Archivaria 53 (May):16-30. https://www.archivaria.ca/index.php/archivaria/article/view/12834.

Issue

Archivaria 53 (Spring 2002)

Section

Articles

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