Reading the archival revolution : declassified stories and their challenges / Cristina Vatulescu.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vatulescu, Cristina, 1976- author.

Contributor:

Krakus, Anna, contributor.

Series:

Square one (Series)

Square one : first-order questions in the humanities

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intelligence service--Europe, Eastern--Archival resources.

Intelligence service.

Intelligence service--Former communist countries--Archival resources.

Official secrets--Europe, Eastern--Archival resources.

Official secrets.

Official secrets--Former communist countries--Archival resources.

Europe, Eastern--History--1945-1989--Archival resources.

Europe, Eastern.

Former communist countries--History--Archival resources.

Former communist countries.

Physical Description:

xvii, 291 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"The opening of classified documents from the Soviet era has been dubbed the 'archival revolution' due to its unprecedented scale, drama, and impact. With a storyteller's sensibility, Cristina Vatulescu identifies and takes on the main challenges of reading in these archives. This transnational study foregrounds peripheral Eastern European perspectives and the ethical stakes of archival research. In so doing, it contributes to the urgent task of decolonizing the field of Eastern European and Russian studies at this critical moment in the region's history. Drawing on diverse work ranging from Mikhail Bakhtin to Tina Campt, the book enters into broader conversations about the limits and potential of reading documents, fictions, and one another. Pairing one key reading challenge with a particularly arresting story, Vatulescu in turn investigates Michel Foucault's traces in Polish secret police archives; tackles the files, reenactment film, and photo albums of a socialist bank heist; pits autofiction against disinformation in the secret police files of Nobel Prize laureate Herta Müller; and takes on the digital remediation of Soviet-era archives by analyzing contested translations of the Iron Curtain trope from its 1946 origins to the current war in Ukraine. The result is a bona fide reader's guide to Eastern Europe's ongoing archival revolution"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Foreword / Paul A. Kottman

Introduction. Challenges of reading the archival revolution

Silences : Foucault in Poland / co-authored with Anna Krakus

Intermedia : the files, film, and photo albums of a socialist bank heist

Fictions : literary guides to reading in the secret police archives

Silences (take two) : gendered archival lacunae

Data : the Iron Curtain's origins and translations

Postscript. Toward a polyphonic reading practice, II.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Vatulescu, Cristina, 1976- Reading the archival revolution.

ISBN:

9781503640276

1503640272

9781503641020

1503641023

OCLC:

1423041816