This moment in the lecture by Diana Taylor seemed the most compelling. She implied uploading an archive doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a real record of the chosen event. In a way it can never be anything other than a distortion even though one thinks they are “saving it” through digitization, it might not necessarily be transferable. The archive, having a lifespan longer than the events it references, becomes what social institutions use by which to prove things about the past but that might absolutely be false.
“What I’m questioning, however, is whether digital technologies merely extend what we do in embodied and in print material cultures, the repertoire and the archive into the virtual arena or whether they constitute their very own system of transmission that shares some of the features we are used to while moving us into a very different system of knowledge and subjectivity. What is at stake in this argument? At stake I argued, was that fact that embodied practises, measured by the knowledge regime sustained by the archive, failed to provide evidence of the past. Historical documents prove that the land belong to the settlers not to the native populations. First Nations claim to their lands are only now beginning to be recognized in courts if they can demonstrate past practice. For example that their ancestors engaged in specific acts, such as religious ceremonies and fishing, for example on that land. Embodied practices: the courts are beginning to recognize, can transmit knowledge and perform the claim through its own systems of embodiment.”