Abstract
Jacques Derrida famously said of archives that they are “places of power”—”there is no political power without control of the archive”—and I believe that museums are just as much “places of power” (Derrida, 1996, 2–3). Like the residences of magistrates that Derrida identifies as the source, both etymological and topographic, of the archive (arkheion), the museum is a symbolically charged place that proclaims recognition, lineage, and ultimately identity. To say that a painting is “in the Louvre,” or perhaps “in the Clark,” says almost as much about it as who painted it, albeit in a different register. It is deemed worthy of inclusion in a collection that itself constitutes authority. And so the issue of film in the museum is an issue of power, or lack of it, and also, as I shall suggest, an occasion of disturbance.
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Christie, I. (2012). A Disturbing Presence? Scenes from the History of Film in the Museum. In: Vacche, A.D. (eds) Film, Art, New Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137026132_13
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