Hauntology: the archive as past and future

This chapter considers the ways in which the archive haunts, and thus shapes, past, present and future cultural interpretations and re/presentations. Anderson proposes that archives are about forthcoming, as well as memories of the past. The chapter draws on Jacques Derrida's assertion in Archive Fever that the archive in the modern age has transformed the entire public and private space of humanity. Derrida's deconstructive approach to the archive was to question the dichotomy between the public and private, in order to understand the human impulse to preserve. This preservation is enacted through technology as well as tradition.