Remnant of death

"Commemoration, in contrast, is part of the ritual of forgetting: one bids farewell to the desire or the willingness to repeat something."

"The transformation of the archive into a talisman, however, is also accompanied by removing any subversive factors in the memory. In giving those who carry it a feeling of being protected or of being co-owner of a time or co-actor in an event, even if in the past, the talisman softens the anger, shame, guilt, or resentment which the archives tends, if not to incite, then at least to maintain, because of its function of recall. Thus the desire for revenge is removed just as the duty of repentance, justice and reparation is withdrawn. The commodification of memory obliterates the distinction between the victim and the executioner, the consequently enables the state to realize what it has always dreamed of: the abolition of debt and the possibility of starting afresh."

"Examining archives is to be interested in that which life has left behind, to be interested in debt. However, it is also to be preoccupied with debris. In this sense, both the historian and the archivist inhabit a sepulchre. they maintain an intimate relationship with a world alive only by virtue of an initial event that is represented by the act of dying."

"Following tracks, putting back together scraps and debris, and reassembling remains, is to be implicated in a ritual which results in the resuscitation of life, in bringing the dead back to life by reintegrating them in the cycle of time, in such a way that they find, in a text, in an artefact or in a monument, a place to inhabit, from where they may continue to express themselves."

"Dealing with dying also evokes the possibility of the spectre. The archive could not have a relationship with death without including the other remnant of death - the specture."

The Power of the Archive and its Limits, Achille Mbembe

詩意,內省。