bereton_rethinking our archives

Rethinking Our Archive: A BeginningAuthor(s): John C. BreretonSource: College English, Vol. 61, No. 5 (May, 1999), pp. 574-576Published by: National Council of Teachers of EnglishStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/378974 .

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574

ARCHIVISTS WITH AN ATTITUDE

RETHINKING OUR ARCHIVE:

A BEGINNING

John C. Brereton

Whoever would want to print the whole archive?

Leopold von Ranke

Shose of us who work in the history of rhetoric and composition know that over the past few decades our archive, the repository of primary and secondary sources, has been expanding dramatically. For twenty years we have been mak-

ing splendid use of an ever-wider range of material, creating a constantly grow- ing archive. Some parts of this archive, student papers for example, were collected

quite haphazardly and barely examined; other material, like the relatively small

group of essays that appear so often in textbooks that they form what Lynn Bloom calls the essay canon, has been in front of us all along, but didn't come into focus until historians began looking at it in unfamiliar ways. And still other material, like the journals and non-fiction produced by women's clubs or the writings that consti- tute the rhetorical tradition developed by African American women, was barely collected at all or existed in hard-to-find places and awaited the vision of scholars to

bring it to life.

However, the successful work of the recent past ought not to obscure some uncomfortable facts: we still aren't sure what should be in our archive, or how access can be broadened, or which tools we should bring to our task of exploring the past. In fact, we aren't sure exactly what we already have in our archive, or how in fact we even define the term. As scholarship in rhetoric and composition grows, we need to

begin asking what is missing from the archive and how it can get there. And we can also ask some questions while there is still time to act: Are there things we should

The articles that follow are revised versions of papers from the panel "Archivists with an Attitude" pre- sented at the 1998 Conference on College Composition and Communication. They represent the first

stages of a long-term project on the archives in composition studies to be undertaken byJohn Brereton and Thomas Miller.

John C. Brereton is Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Boston. His documentary history, The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College, 1875-1925, received the 1997 CCCC Outstanding Book Award. His "Four Careers in English," a review essay published in the September 1998 College English, is available online at <http://www.ncte.org/ce/sep98/brereton.html>.

COLLEGE ENGLISH, VOLUME 61, NUMBER 5, MAY 1999



ARCHIVISTS: RETHINKING OUR ARCHIVE 575

be working to preserve right now? What can we do now to make sure current practices and materials will be accessible in the archives of the future?

Questions like these should always be in the mind of those who conserve and interpret the past, of course. Historians depend on the work of their forebears, on the collecting that forms libraries and repositories great and small and on the inter- pretations and narratives that help shape consciousness. Scholars freely acknowledge debts in the front matter of their books or in a few footnotes, but only those who have done archival history know how crucial the work of their predecessors has been. Three or four lines in the acknowledgments thanking a librarian or archivist barely convey scholars' real dependence on the foresight of others. Now it's time to return the favor and to consider the needs of those who will depend on our own foresight. Rhetoric and composition scholars have been making use of an archive assembled by others, with other purposes in mind. Now that we're in a position to assemble archives of our own, what principles will guide us? How should we consider the cre- ation, preservation, and best use of archives, both those we've been using and those we'll be creating?

The three essays that follow this brief introduction are the beginning of a project to rethink and redefine the composition and rhetoric archive. They are general overviews of three distinct areas of concern and, though written from different per- spectives, keep circling back to three key issues: access to archives; tools to use in the archives; and the interpretive acts needed to make sense of the archives in the first place.

What techniques are needed to deal with archival material? Linda Ferreira- Buckley points to the importance of the historian's traditional tools, which, despite so much progress, basically haven't changed. Future historians, depending on their subspecialty, will still need some combination of paleography and the appropriate languages, and a working knowledge of the relevant online and print bibliographies. Additionally, they'll need to know which journals, authors, and publishers mattered most at different times, and which collections can provide a researcher with the most help. Whatever the subject of study, and whoever the historians, they will still need exact training. How will they get it? Doctoral programs in history, following Ranke, have traditionally had their own archive of original documents, which a senior historian used to introduce students to the practices of working with original sources. Today, worries Ferreira-Buckley, students of composition and rhetoric are often lim- ited to a single graduate course in historical studies. Can that be enough to impart the necessary skills?

Steven Mailloux elegantly demonstrates that the question of how one ap- proaches an archive is fraught with fascinating problems. When does interpreting begin? Before or after one has established a text? In fact, the very process of estab- lishing the text is far from simple. Examining the intersection of literary theory and textual scholarship, Mailloux shows how the editing process, and particularly the



576 COLLEGE ENGLISH

correction of what seem at first like simple typographical errors, calls forth inter-

pretative skills of the highest order. Thomas Miller and Melody Bowdon contextualize the rhetorical archive and

move beyond composition to the rich traditions of civic discourse, classical rhetorical theory, and moral philosophy, sites eminently rewarding to rhetorical scrutiny. Citing a hallowed notion, the "civic ideal of the individual citizen speaking pur- posefully for the common good," Miller and Bowden wonder what kind of archive of actual historical practices would enable rhetoricians to confirm or qualify the exis- tence of a genuine tradition of civic discourse. Ultimately, Miller and Bowden take as their central issue the rhetorical stance scholars ought to have toward their archive and their research processes.

Additionally, all three essays confront the key issue of access to the archive. Miller and Bowdon remind us that not all we need is available in the archive, and much of the online material still has restrictions on its use. Ferreira-Buckley points out that even with access, historians need appropriate tools to make the access mean-

ingful. Mailloux's essay shows that access and tools themselves aren't enough. The users themselves need to perform acts of interpretation to bring the archive to life.

So our term "archive" is hardly static; these three essays represent a beginning of what we regard as a necessary examination of both our heritage and our legacy. We hope they help scholars to think about the archive in new and productive ways.



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