As with any self-respecting blog, this one goes off-topic now and again (it even goes off the rails now and again). The last post was really about the writing of history, which is different than the archive. I mean, a history book is a sort of archive, insofar as it chronicles events and cites sources. But we usually think of the archive as being the raw material of history – the place where the traces of history are housed. Jacques Derrida wrote about the archive’s being defined by that which it excludes – that is, the archive is an impression of power, of policing the boundaries. He’s referring, in the first instance, to the documents – and histories – that don’t make it into the official archives or records. That which is not considered worth saving. And that decision defines who’s in and who’s out (i.e., is an exercise of power).
While I find that argument cogent, one should also think about other things the archive attempts to exclude – or tries to: thieves, vandals, water, sunlight, fire. There may come a time, in the not-so-distant future, due to more extreme weather, social breakdown, or just government de-funding, that present-day archives become ruins – like the façade of the Library of Alexandria. The same goes for that bio-archive, the Seed Bank: glacial meltwater has already inundated its vestibule. Remember the heroic imams and scholars in Mali who hid all those ancient texts from the nutso fundamentalist militants? We should. Worse yet, if in a hypothetical yet plausible future humanity ceases to exist*, to whom or what is the archive of any value? And if you foresee such an event, does archiving still make sense? Perhaps there is an inherent ethical, spiritual, or aesthetic value in the very act of preservation, as an acknowledgement and affirmation of having existed. For some reason, that thought makes me relax. It takes the pressure off the future – and the past. We are now a force of nature, in spite of ourselves. We are a force of nature that will soon be a natural feature: stones, post-holes, bones. Fossils. We always had been; it’s just that now that the effects are spiraling out of our control, it seems to be happening independently of human will. We can try to mitigate the effects or adapt to the future. But if certain wheels have already been set in motion, then much of the situation is out of our control. Given such a situation, whether our archive survives or not is a matter outside of our control or ability to predict. What is in our control is the act of donating items to the research library; and the librarians’ taking care of them. And while we are alive (individually and collectively), let’s consult the archives. The act of reading a letter from long ago, and articulating our present-day concerns to those expressed in the letter, has a way of making one feel less lonely. Moreover, if at least some people survive climate catastrophe, which I view as likely – if they make some kind of culture within a very different, less predictable, earth – then some of the artifacts probably will survive. If I were those future people, I’d be grateful to the past (i.e., present) people who made that happen. ------------------------------- * In my view, this is wishful thinking – both for the surviving humans and other species. Pace the “Near-Term Human Extinction” folks, the record shows humans can take a pretty hard drubbing before they succumb. I do think there will be fewer of us. But even in the event of thermonuclear war, there will be some humans battling it out for world domination with the cockroaches, rats, and bacteria. Having said that, we don’t know what’s ahead. Stay tuned!
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They're having quite a time of it in Masham . . . lawrence f. kansas,
7/31: rainfall: month to date: 1.76 in; average m.t.d.: 4.18; last 12 hrs.: about 10 inches: once more the backyard a lake, the street a stream, the drought a deluge – weird train of storms sinking north to south right over us – constant thunder, flashes, alarums – a foretaste – just as “worst floods in living memory devastated parts of u.k.: more than a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours . . . persistent & torrential”; while in germany, the parching rhine remains unnavigable & supply-chains dry up behind it as saharan air moves across europe – "normally when a record’s broken, it's by a fraction of a degree . . . yesterday [7/30] records were broken by two, three, four degrees – it was absolutely incredible" (temps in celsius, here); apple crops decimated & “greenhouse tomato plants almost cooked or liquified” (they call it the “greenhouse effect” for a reason) – and beyond – into greenland – & what happens in greenland does not stay in greenland as we know (we won’t even talk about the heat wave in the oceans . . . let’s just say, get ready to pay more for seafood) yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah you know all this – you’re reading this chronicle; you might resign yourself, you might act, demand your leaders prepare, when you can’t any longer ignore it, when it actually looks like something bad is going to happen; you might write your legislator or your editor to try to mitigate the situation, or put in solar panels, but we can’t stop what’s “baked in” already, they say. meanwhile, alaska has warmest month ever (baked-in alaska?): no freezing temps anywhere in state in july; it’s your choice: “super hot and stuffy inside, or very warm & smoky outside” (from the 2 mil acres burning, melting permafrost, that’s spewing tons of CO2 & methane, which speeds up global heating, which causes more permafrost to melt, which causes . . . (when the room becomes too smoky, i will leave it, epictetus says) & hunan is running out of water & crops fail; & the size of wildfires in russia bigger than belgium, if all of belgium were on fire; putin sent his army to fight them, but it’s not a regular war; & chennai still schlepping 660k gal / day of water by train elsewhere, the man w/the little fish & rice restaurant on the beach in honduras says: “every year, the ocean is getting closer & higher. i think we’ve got a year – maybe two – before the water takes us too. it won’t be long.” tidal surges wipe out homes, businesses, roads: “locals estimate around a metre of ground lost every year – which means this entire community will soon be underwater.” local fisherman: “every year, less fish, & the surges have nowhere to go – so the water comes here looking for an exit. we’ve woken up in the middle of the night surrounded by water. . . . basically, we’re chingados” – or trying to move north; & i remember what that i.p.c.c. scientist said: you can stop 20,000 people from crossing yr border, but you can’t stop 20,000,000 . . . are you ready for them? with beds or with guns? ready for more deluge & drought, more heat, more aedes aegypti, more wildfires (forest, grassland, urban)? like, maybe it’s time to say something? like, at every available opportunity? to anyone who’s able to hear? |
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June 2021
Kristin Prevallet Author/Editor
I'm a writer & teacher in Lawrence, Kansas who actually believes the scientists. I wrote a book of poems called Of Some Sky that seems to have something to do with all this. |