FCJ-174 Constructing the contemporary via digital cultural heritage

Abstract

The present article questions the construction of 'the contemporary' in digital cultural heritage archives as specific strategic articulations between past and present with regard to the future. A historical exploration of the discourse of cultural heritage presents three strategic axes supposedly executed by the archive. Via a fourfold problematisation of the notion of the contemporary these axes are further developed with regard to W.J.T. Mitchell and Georges Didi-Huberman's respective readings of Warburg's Atlas Mnemosyne and Malraux's Musée imaginaire. The article finally questions the possibility of ascribing inherent epistemological, existential, empirical and geopolitical force to a given technological archival order.

Keywords

• Musée imaginaire
• Atlas Mnemosyne
• Malraux
• Warburg
• W.J.T. Mitchell
• Georges Didi-Huberman
• Archive
• technology
• cultural heritage