The ‘Digital Turn’ in Partition Studies: Reading the 1947 Partition Archive via the Lens of Archive Fever

Abstract

The paper studies the paradigm shift in the field of Partition studies because of the ‘digital turn’ and the role that the website 1947 Partition Archive plays in it. Digitalization goes beyond just a change in medium and critically questions the power and control that is rooted in traditional archives. According to Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever (Derrida 1996), the archive, conventionally, is not an independent depository but a disputed realm wherein who is in power becomes relevant in deciding what should be preserved, who will have access and which memories shall be popularised or repressed. Derrida’s assertion of the concept of “fever”, i.e., the necessity to remember and a concurrent anxiety of forgetting, highlights the intrinsic apprehensions involved in the process of archiving. The 1947 Archive obstructs state-controlled discourse by focusing on the new technology to democratise the production of memory and, consequently, prioritize excluded narratives that failed to find a place in official historical accounts. It emphasizes personalised stories, oral histories, and emotional experiences over impersonal bureaucratic records. It allows for simultaneous existence of varied and often contradictory stories of agony, migration strength and (be)-longing. By revising the archive as an inclusive and heterogeneous space, this digital archive contests traditional definitions of archival data and the control it exercises. In line with Derridean archival theory, it re-evaluates the gatekeeping of records and encourages an all-embracing dialogue with the past. The 1947 Archive elucidates the manner in which digital archives diligently rewrite the (de)-construction and sharing of history in the digital era, enabling more moral and humanistic forms of recording memory history.