Digital Archives: The Politics of Everyday and the Ordinary

Archives, from time immemorial, have been specialized spaces of knowledge and power, often inaugurated and developed by the ruling elite as part of their move to expand and consolidate their power and control over the population. Over a period of time, archives have come to represent the elites and intellectuals. They are embedded in structures of dominance, in terms of access, production, and consumption and are an integral part of nation-building. In the transition from the print to the digital era, archives and their nature have undergone paradigm transmutations and transgressions. Digitality has transformed the archive and even the practices of memory and remembering associated with archives. The exclusive, elitist nature of the archive has changed to become democratic and inclusive in terms of who, what, and how archives may be accessed, produced or consumed and the processes of archiving itself. Abigail de Kosnik in Rogue Archives: Digital Cultural Memory and Media Fandom posit the idea of “rogue archives” that the digital age has spawned. These are digital archives of cultural content produced by nonprofessionals like fans, amateurs, hackers, pirates, and even volunteers (de Kosnik 2). Digital cultural archives are digital worlds that have democratized memory in ways history and state politics never imagined possible. This entry will attempt to understand the nature of digital archives produced, operated and consumed by the “ordinary man” (seemingly without agency) in Michel de Certeau’s words, and the nature of the representation by the common people in these archives of the everyday.