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<p>This article examines the ephemerality of memory in the digital age through the case study of Anatoly Naiman’s archive, acquired by Princeton University in 2023. Alongside manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs, the collection included the poet’s personal computer, containing a&#xa0;fully assembled but unpublished volume of late poems in which <i>memory</i> functions as a&#xa0;central leitmotif. Treating this born-digital manuscript as both literary text and computational artifact, the article explores how digital media reshape the ontology of cultural memory. It argues that memory in the digital archive is no longer sustained solely through narrative transmission or material preservation but through algorithmic infrastructures—file systems, storage media, and preservation protocols—that render remembrance simultaneously fragile and indefinitely reproducible. Drawing on archival theory and media archaeology, the study interrogates the ethical tensions surrounding posthumous exposure, privacy, and institutional stewardship. The Naiman case demonstrates how digital preservation may operate as both rescue from oblivion and transformation of private memory into public patrimony. Ultimately, the article contends that contemporary archives are not passive repositories of the past but active sites where technological materiality, institutional authority, and competing conceptions of memory converge.</p>

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Ephemerality of memory in the digital age: The case of Anatoly Naiman’s archive

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年3月11日

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  • Yuri Leving

摘要

This article examines the ephemerality of memory in the digital age through the case study of Anatoly Naiman’s archive, acquired by Princeton University in 2023. Alongside manuscripts, correspondence, and photographs, the collection included the poet’s personal computer, containing a fully assembled but unpublished volume of late poems in which memory functions as a central leitmotif. Treating this born-digital manuscript as both literary text and computational artifact, the article explores how digital media reshape the ontology of cultural memory. It argues that memory in the digital archive is no longer sustained solely through narrative transmission or material preservation but through algorithmic infrastructures—file systems, storage media, and preservation protocols—that render remembrance simultaneously fragile and indefinitely reproducible. Drawing on archival theory and media archaeology, the study interrogates the ethical tensions surrounding posthumous exposure, privacy, and institutional stewardship. The Naiman case demonstrates how digital preservation may operate as both rescue from oblivion and transformation of private memory into public patrimony. Ultimately, the article contends that contemporary archives are not passive repositories of the past but active sites where technological materiality, institutional authority, and competing conceptions of memory converge.