From the archive as a technology of control to the documentary act as a technology of resistance

Abstract

Following the case of the documentation of state terrorism by civil society during the last military dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990), and deepening the re-conceptualization of archives triggered by the recent “archival turn”, this paper describes our proposal of including another scale and level of examination in the research on (human rights) archives. This proposal opens up the space for examining documenting practices and products, artefacts and technical resources that mediate their production, and the acts of transposition that re-inscribe what is enunciated in future times and different arenas. In parallel, and against conventional understandings of archives as technologies of governmentality, we propose that archives can also become technologies of resistance.