Lost in the Archives

by Jacques Derrida, Gustave Flaubert, Rebecca Comay (Editor)

There is a crisis in the archives. Contemporary protocols for archiving and accessing increasingly vast amounts of materials present unprecedented possibilities and problems for the production, classification, and use of knowledge. Surveying the jagged edge between memory and forgetting, revealing the force and scope of some of memory's losses--its technical drop-outs, its lacunae, burials, omissions, eclipses, and denials-- Lost in the Archives explores the thesis that memory is productively read from its failures and absences, in the not-yet or impossible archives, in archive fevers and dementias, in all the places archives cannot or have not looked. Investigations on the limits of memory are instigated by over 70 artists and writers, including Jacques Derrida, Atom Egoyan, Gustave Flaubert, Boris Groys, Candida Höfer, Rem Koolhaas, Sol Lewitt, Bruce Mau, and Jeff Wall. Like a purloined letter, the shelved and forgotten book wields its most virulent power precisely in being unread. Unread, if not indeed illegible, what is lost in the archive may prove to exert the most shocking force. Edited and with an introduction by Rebecca Comay. Series Editor John Knechtel. Art Director Gilbert Li. Paperback, 640 pages, 200 color and 75 b&w images.

Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Manik Sukoco · Rating 3 out of 5]

The wreckage of a lost world, an old fossil of romanticism!
There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. “There it is.”