Abstract
The question posed by the archive is that of its place: why is it there? Why is it still there? In other words, since we have defined the archive as all material or visible libraries, what is it that keeps material libraries going, and therefore, through them, the invisible libraries they reflect?
The answer lies precisely in this coincidence, underlined by Jacques Derrida in his text, Mal d'archive: une impression freudienne (1995), between beginning and command. The archive is a beginning instituted by a commandment. It is a beginning that makes what precedes it invisible. A beginning that invisibilizes the rest, and invisibilizes it by command. Therein lies the secret of the archive's stability: its role in the edifice of power - of one power, at least.
It might be thought, however, that the stability of the archive lies elsewhere: in its material. Physical libraries, built of stone, wood and paper, are stable and durable. The mistake, however, would be to believe that material alone is enough to preserve a library from the ravages of time. For a start, materials are not eternal. It is itself subject to the accidents of history. When we think of accidents affecting libraries, the first that springs to mind is undoubtedly fire. The library fire is a commonplace in the library imagination, as Umberto Eco showed in his famous novel, The Name of the Rose.
Physical libraries, then, don't exist on their own. Were it not for a force that holds the documents they contain together, a force that contributes to the library's survival, it would fall into ruin or see its documents reduced to dust. The stability of the archive lies in a force that enables it to survive. The archive needs a creative force to come into existence, but also a continuing force to enable it to continue, as in the Cartesian concept of continuous creation: if God did not sustain the existence of beings at all times, they would disappear.
