The Allure of the Archives by Arlette Farge (review)

As always, the problem lies partly with the definite article and the question of singular or plural nouns: "The Allure of the Archives" is not quite the same as "The Allure of Archives" or "The Allure of the Archive," and none is quite the same as "Le Goût de l'archive," the title under which Farge's book was first published in 1989. It is made up of four discursive chapters and three narratives of daily life in the fonds. Its translator is faced with the same issue that confronts those trying to render l'histoire du livre into English. The uncertainty runs throughout the book. The reader is told at the start of sentences that "The archive": "was not compiled with an eye toward history"; "lays things bare"; "preserves these moments"; "imposes a startling contradiction"; "shines a light on the people of the city"; "is born out of disorder"; "always preserves an infinite number of relations to reality"; "is an excess of meaning"; "speaks of the Parisian woman"; "is not simple"; "complicates the approach to these questions." At the same time, "the archives": "do not necessarily tell the truth"; "also shed light"; "find her not just caught in these circumstances"; "once again, surprise us"; "bring forward details that disabuse, derail, and straightforwardly break any hope of linearity or positivism"; "are not a stockpile." The granting of agency to the archive(s)—they "reject any ready-made tropes"—is characteristic of the book's overheated and solemn prose. The documents allow the reader to "make out a long limping procession of baroque silhouettes," but the archive also "pins them down like trembling butterflies" (they have already been cut and cemented); it is "like a kaleidoscope revolving before your eyes," but one that produces a "whirlwind." When she reports directly on what she has found in the archive(s), Farge is always interesting, but the more portentous parts of the book are as irritating as the archivist's "high heels clicking crisply on the floor."