New Books Network Podcast: „Reading the Archival Revolution: Declassified Stories and Their Challenges“

Im New Books Net­work Pod­cast in der Rei­he „New Books in Library Sci­ence“ sprach Cristi­na Vat­ules­cu am 8.12.2024 mit Jen Hoy­er über ihre Forschung rund um Archivalia aus der Sow­jet-Zeit:

The open­ing of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments from the Sovi­et era has been dubbed the „archival rev­o­lu­tion“ due to its unprece­dent­ed scale, dra­ma, and impact. With a storyteller’s sen­si­bil­i­ty, in Read­ing the Archival Rev­o­lu­tion: Declas­si­fied Sto­ries and Their Chal­lenges (Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2024), Cristi­na Vat­ules­cu iden­ti­fies and takes on the main chal­lenges of read­ing in these archives.

This transna­tion­al study fore­grounds periph­er­al East­ern Euro­pean per­spec­tives and the eth­i­cal stakes of archival research. In so doing, it con­tributes to the urgent task of decol­o­niz­ing the field of East­ern Euro­pean and Russ­ian stud­ies at this crit­i­cal moment in the region’s his­to­ry. Draw­ing on diverse work rang­ing from Mikhail Bakhtin to Tina Campt, the book enters into broad­er con­ver­sa­tions about the lim­its and poten­tial of read­ing doc­u­ments, fic­tions, and one anoth­er. Pair­ing one key read­ing chal­lenge with a par­tic­u­lar­ly arrest­ing sto­ry, Vat­ules­cu in turn inves­ti­gates Michel Foucault’s traces in Pol­ish secret police archives; tack­les the files, reen­act­ment film, and pho­to albums of a social­ist bank heist; pits aut­ofic­tion against dis­in­for­ma­tion in the secret police files of Nobel Prize lau­re­ate Her­ta Müller; and takes on the dig­i­tal reme­di­a­tion of Sovi­et-era archives by ana­lyz­ing con­test­ed trans­la­tions of the Iron Cur­tain trope from its 1946 ori­gins to the cur­rent war in Ukraine. The result is a bona fide reader’s guide to East­ern Europe’s ongo­ing archival rev­o­lu­tion.

Cristi­na Vat­ules­cu is Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Com­par­a­tive Lit­er­a­ture, New York Uni­ver­si­ty and the author of Police Aes­thet­ics: Lit­er­a­ture, Film, and the Secret Police Archives in Sovi­et Times (Stan­ford, 2010).

Jen Hoy­er is Tech­ni­cal Ser­vices and Elec­tron­ic Resources Librar­i­an at CUNY New York City Col­lege of Tech­nol­o­gy. She is co-author of What Pri­ma­ry Sources Teach: Lessons for Every Class­room and The Social Move­ment Archive.

Das Buch „Read­ing the Archival Rev­o­lu­tion: Declas­si­fied Sto­ries and Their Chal­lenges“ ist bei uns als eBook im Bestand.