Why an archive?
Irish state archives preserve and make accessible the records of the Irish State. They thus perform a statutory function. The purpose of the State archives are administered by government Acts, such as the National Archives Act 1986. Therefore State legislation determines what is recorded or not recorded. According to government Acts, the National Library must collect all the newspapers.
‘Most titles are acquired under legal deposit legislation, which states that a copy of each newspaper published in the State must be donated to the National Library’ (National Library of Ireland, 2015).
Hence our state archives determine the present and also the future discursive formation on our current housing crisis, despite their exclusions and misrepresentations.
Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever (1995) explains, in principle, this is how an ideology is created. He determines that the creators of the archive hold the power, because they decide which are the important papers and what should be archived.
The purpose of this people's archive contests the State's dominance on the hegemonic narrative around our housing crisis. This people's archive offers a platform for all people to tell their stories in their own words about the housing crisis and offer an alternative platform to the state and corporate narrative.
‘Most titles are acquired under legal deposit legislation, which states that a copy of each newspaper published in the State must be donated to the National Library’ (National Library of Ireland, 2015).
Hence our state archives determine the present and also the future discursive formation on our current housing crisis, despite their exclusions and misrepresentations.
Jacques Derrida in Archive Fever (1995) explains, in principle, this is how an ideology is created. He determines that the creators of the archive hold the power, because they decide which are the important papers and what should be archived.
The purpose of this people's archive contests the State's dominance on the hegemonic narrative around our housing crisis. This people's archive offers a platform for all people to tell their stories in their own words about the housing crisis and offer an alternative platform to the state and corporate narrative.
There is no political power without control of the archive, if not memory.
Effective democratisation can always be measured by this essential criterion:
the participation in and the access to the archive, its constitution, and its interpretation
(Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (1995), 11).
