What is an Archive?: An Apparatus Model for Communications and Media History

Abstract

The author argues for a new methodology for investigating the history of communications and media. Media and communications processes and technologies need to be examined as elements of apparatuses. The author examines the theoretical underpinnings of such an approach by first outlining Michel Foucault's writing on the topic and then investigating the recent use of the term by Giorgio Agamben. Taking an apparatus approach demands more broadly conceiving of the archive to include nonsignifying objects and material concerns. Such an approach is further elaborated through examples on the basis of Raymond Williams' seminal book Television: Technology and Cultural Form and the author's own research on automobility and Citizens Band Radio. The author concludes by offering 5 modes of enquiry to guide an apparatus approach to media and communications history.A new archivist has been appointed. But has anyone actually appointed him? Is he not rather acting on his own instructions? Certain malevolent people say that he is the new representative of a structural technology or technocracy. Others, mistaking their insults for wit, claim that he is a supporter of Hitler, or at least that he offends the rights of man (they will not forgive him for having proclaimed the "death of man"). Some say that he is a shammer who cannot back himself up with reference to sacred texts, and who seldom quotes the great philosophers. Others, though, claim that something new has appeared in philosophy, and that this work is as beautiful as those it challenges. It celebrates the dawn of a new age.

Digitizing the paper of record: Archiving digital newspapers at the New York Times

“…It is an apparatus that connects journalists, archivists, computer scientists, researchers, technologies and platforms. It comprises plans, practices, archival approaches and journalistic theories (Packer, 2010). Moreover, as this paper demonstrates, the organization of the news archival documents, the structure and maintenance of the morgue and the human and machine factors involved in the archival process have not been well-documented.…”

“…The answers to all of these questions have the potential to shape the way these materials are understood and the narratives that emerge from their interpretation. They are the elements that comprise the archive as apparatus (Packer, 2010).…”

“…To study the network of humans, machines and institutions that participate in and enable the construction of an archive of digital newspapers, this study employs an ‘apparatus approach’. As the name of the approach implies, Packer (2010) suggests examining the archive as an apparatus, or a mechanism for linking things together and ‘a strategically organized network of discursive and nondiscursive elements brought together to address problems resulting from specific formations of knowledge’ (p. 89). Understanding the construction of an archive – any archive – requires answering a set of questions to determine the elements and connections that allowed the archive to establish itself as a legitimized, authorized mechanism for providing evidence.…”

Reprogramming Modernism

“…For many forms of media and communications analysis the potential archive is swelling due to the exponential expansion of digital storage capacity. Brief rumination upon Agamben's examples of how apparatuses work more generally would lead us to see that the archive of the apparatus comprises the sign, signifier, and technologies of inscription and maintenance (Packer, 2010).…”

Restarting Static

“… 14. “Particular terms come to take on such significance that they can be used to justify nearly any truth claim across numerous discourses to justify a vast array of initiatives, plans, responses, and resistances.” See Packer (2010) for a more detailed discussion. …”