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文化意义与文化历史
Cultural Significance versus Cultural History
October 19th, 2024
档案本应记录过去发生的事情。
正如Spohnholz（2014）所述，19世纪初的新学术历史学家认为档案“提供了最直接的途径，帮助人们倾听过去几个世纪的声音”。
Spohnholz还提到中世纪的政治或宗教机构，它们利用档案作为维护自身权威的工具。这些档案不仅旨在记录内容，更是在试图影响当时人们的思想，并对后代产生影响。例如一些历史学家在研究历史时可能会陷入一种误区：他们会过分强调中央集权国家和教会机构在前现代时期的重要性，从而继续边缘化过去这些机构有意边缘化的人群。
这些对档案的引用反映了人们“对历史的思考”，这是一种对历史进行普遍意义建构的行为（Tosh，2008）。它可能更重视结果而非过程，只关注历史对现代社会带来的影响。
然而，为了充分利用历史或档案，或许更好的方式是“用历史思考”，正如Carl Schorske（2014）所倡导的那样，帮助人们“警惕其许多历史发现对今天公众认知的影响”（Tosh，2008）。
Schorske解释，“用历史思考”有两种模式。其一，历史可以帮助后世进行自我定位——今天的我们与过去截然相反，还是存在一些相似之处？其二，如果我们将自己置于历史的洪流之中，思考现在与过去和未来的关系，我们或许会发现今天的特别之处和潜在的机会。
这就是为什么我在研究问题中使用了“文化意义”一词而非“文化历史”，同时在项目中引入档案这个概念。尽管我鼓励参与项目的人们回忆并分享他们过去的经历，为档案增砖添瓦，但本质目标是帮助人们在这个过程中逐渐意识到他们个人对城市文化资产复兴的影响力。无论是从过去传承下来的内容还是近年来新兴的文化趋势，都可以被归类为文化资产。
这样就更容易将项目与参与式档案联系起来。参与式档案鼓励用户“被重新概念化为共同构建历史理解的积极参与者”（Benoit & Eveleigh，2021），这促进了人们对文化的积极探索，而不是被动的知识输入。
我也计划把上述内容成中文并分享到小红书上。
This post aims to fill one logical gap in my project, as was pointed out by our language tutor Roger two weeks ago, through answering the question: why participatory archiving is adopted in this project to explore the cultural significance in the modern society rather than disclose cultural history in the past?
Archives are supposed to document what happened in the past.
As Spohnholz (2014) stated, archives ‘were seen to offer the most direct access to voices from past centuries’ by the new academic historians in the early 19th century.
Spohnholz also mentioned political or religious institutions in the Middle Ages, which used archives as tools to preserve their authorities. These archives not simply functioned as descriptive content, but influenced people’s thoughts at that time as well as affected later generations. For example, historians might ‘have sometimes overemphasized the importance of centralized states and official churches in the pre-modern era, or have treated as marginal those people who those officials wanted to treat as marginal’.
Such references to the archives reflect people’s ‘thinking about history’, an act of a general meaning making of the history (Tosh, 2008). It might values the outcome over the process, just focusing on the influences that history have brought to the modern society.
However, to take full advantage of histories or archives, it might be better to ‘think with history’, as was advocated by Carl Schorske (2014), to help people ‘be alert to the implications that many of its findings have for public understanding’ (Tosh, 2008).
As was explained by Schorske, there are two modes of ‘thinking with history’. First, the images of the past help us position ourselves – are we different from the past, or sharing some similarities with it. Second, the temporal flows revealed by history demonstrate narratives of change and subsequently form our historical present. Based on my understanding, through placing ourselves in the temporal flow and thinking about how the present relates to the past and future, we might find the distinctiveness and potentials opportunities in the contemporary era.
That is the reason why I am using ‘cultural significance’ rather than ‘cultural history’ in the research question while introducing the word archive in this project. Even though people participating in my project are encouraged to recollect and share their experiences in the past to contribute to the archive, the objective is to help people understand their influences on reinvigorating the potentials of abundant cultural assets, either being passed on from the past or emerging in recent years, during the process of recalling and archiving.
Then it is easier to relate the project to participatory archiving. Participatory archive encourages users to ‘be reconceptualized as active participants in the co-production of historical understanding’ (Benoit & Eveleigh, 2021), which facilitate active exploration of culture rather than knowledge input in a passive mode.
I will also translate the answer above into Chinese and share it on RedNote.
参考文献 Bibliography
Benoit, I.E. and Eveleigh, A. (2021) Participatory archives: Theory and practice. London: Facet.
Schorske, C.E. (1998) Thinking with History: Explorations in the Passage to Modernism. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Tosh, J. (2008) Why History Matters. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
University of Cambridge (2014) Q&A: how archives make history. Available at: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/discussion/qa-how-archives-make-history (Accessed: 19 October 2024)