Memory packed and unpacked:

Instances of resistance to the cultural practices of archiving

in Greek literature of the 19th century

Athina Markopoulou
PhD Candidate
UoA
“Let us not begin at the beginning”
Derrida, Archive fever
 ἀρχή

Commencement
Commandment
 Modern Greek state founded in 1830
*
Its commencement went together with the
urgent commandment to constitute a
common national memory
Kostis Palamas building, UoA
Kostis Palamas 1859-1943
A science of the archive must include
the theory of this institutionalization
…[the theory of the right that]
imposes or supposes a bundle of
limits which have a history, a
deconstructable history…(Derrida,
Archive fever)
 Unbound…
• …a bundle of metaphorical and non
metaphorical uses of the archive
• …a bundle of limits that
–consolidated the book culture in
Greece in the late 19th century
–constituted the National Greek
Literature
 Historical context

Syllogomania (1896): the

practice of “frenetically”
collecting manuscripts and books,
of founding libraries and
museums, of constituting private
and public collections
 Historical context

• NLG founded in 1830

• Founding speech: “book
collections are συσκευασμένη
μνήμη” ; “memory “packaged” or
memory in an apparatus”
(Moustoxydis, 1830)
 Historical context
• “a nation without a memory cannot
have a literature” (Roidis, 1900)
• “it is impossible for new-born
nations to have a provision of
memories abundant enough for the
needs of literary production” (Roidis,
1900)
 Historical context
• Books contain knowledge only as a
form which can be neatly packaged in
the compartments of memory
• Readers tend to become mere
apparatuses, as mechanical as their
printing machines
Nietzsche, On the use and abuse of history for life,
1876.
 Historical context
• “Culture to be struck dead by
culture”
• “…an art of being able to
forget”

Nietzsche, On the use and abuse of

history for life, 1876.
 poetics of waste and destruction
• part of a phenomenology of the archive
• the other side of the metaphor of memory as
a constituted archive based on accumulation,
preservation and capitalization
• …within the contours of the metaphorical
space that allowed inclusion in -and exclusion
from a mnemonic realm created in the 19th
century
 Two instances of resistance to 19th
century cultural practices
Michel Mitsakis Alexandra Papadopoulou
1868-1916 1867-1906
 Mitsakis, Old papers

He is putting an order to his coffer.

 Mitsakis, Old papers
However feasible it might be to dethrone order, it is
almost equally impossible to defeat disorder,
especially when disorder is the past and –with time-
it has acquired the right to be considered as the
natural state of things.

These old papers are the ultimate witness and the only
reminiscence, loyally stored in the shadow of the
obscure coffer and warmingly nestled in its disorder.
 Mitsakis, Old papers
…Under his hand, which is indifferently raking through them,
which is slowly tearing them apart and which is throwing
them away through the open window, the old times that have
been dead , crystallized in the papers are reconstituted…

His hand is continuously tearing apart.

Together with the papers being brought up from the depths of

the coffer, the conditions under which they were born rise
from the bottom of his heart. […] The monotonous crackle
that the papers give away while they are being torn apart, is
their eulogy that they pronounce to themselves. And then they
let themselves to be taken away by the breeze.
 Mitsakis, Old papers

Why did I tear them apart?

Διατί να τα σχίσω;
 Mitsakis, the fou literraire
vs
Palamas, the canon defender
“Mr Palamas is standing in front of me judging that a
writer’s work is significant only when it forms an
organic whole, and therefore when it is published in
the form of a book. […] For the construction of books
many capacities beyond writing are required; I am
sad that I don’t possess some of them, but there are
others that I would not wish to have at all. […] I am a
simple man whom fate has destined to […] throw
scattered impressions on scattered pieces of paper”.
(Mitsakis letter to Palamas, 1893)
 Mitsakis’ “survival”
“Will there be someone
to collect whatever of
merit the unforgettable
Greek writer scattered?
Will there be a
publishing house to
publish the fine works
of the unfortunate
intellectual?” (article on
Mitsakis death, 1916)
Alexandra Papadopoulou

Kostakis’ manuscripts
Papadopoulou, Kostakis’ manuscripts
Publisher speaking:

“his works will be a heritage for the next

generations”.

“[His manuscripts] belong to the humanity”

Papadopoulou, Kostakis’ manuscripts
“Ariadni jumped up, laughed insanely and
said: «Please go to the hall and I will bring the
manuscripts to you». […] She opened Kostakis’
coffer, took Kostakis’ manuscripts, kissed them
tenderly in respect and then, threw them in
the stove and watched their flames and heard
their crackling in insane joy. After a few
minutes, she opened the door and said to the
old man. «Come in, they’re ready». The old
man rubbed his hands and entered happily.
«Kostakis’ manuscripts are in there in black
ashes»”.
Contradiction inherent to the archive

• “Madness is the absence of work”

(Foucault)
• “Radical destruction can again be
reinvested in another logic, in the
inexhaustible economistic resource of an
archive which capitalizes everything, even
that which ruins it or radically contests its
power”. (Derrida, Archive fever, 13)
 Conclusion
• Writing as an act of resistance against the
institutions that it is always already part
of
• A literary device introducing a liminal
space where the realm of books and the
space of archivization include the
conditions of their destruction
 Thank you!
Athina Markopoulou
UoA
amarkop@outlook.com.gr