Archiving Protest Digitally : The Temporal Regime of Immediation

• Media technologies are crucial for the experience of time and temporality. Hence, changes in the technological configurations of the media ecology have far-reaching consequences for temporal experiences and practices. At the same time, social practices are shaping media technologies in diverse ways. One way the dialectical relationship between time and technology is expressed is the current preservation of the past for future generations. In that context the notion of the archive as practice and institution has long been central to discussions of social organization and cultural production. However, archival practices are changing with digitization. This article explores the changes in temporality of the archive through the lens of protest movements that are both objects of archiving and subjects of self-archiving practices. Combining experiences with different kinds of archives ranging from the institutional physical archive to digital archives including born-digital materials, I ask after the consequences of the changing temporalities and time regimes of the archive in terms of its politics and, ultimately, after the historicity of protest movements.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Media and Communications (hsv//eng)

Keyword

protest movements

digital archives

archiving protest

temporality

pro test time

time regimes

Kritisk kulturteori

Critical and Cultural Theory

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)