Tracks and Traces: geographies, histories, memories
Maria Tamboukou, University of East London
In the last chapter of our book ‘The Archive Project’, where we take the notion of the trace as a way to look back at our work and weave together its different threads, we point to the different translations of Bloch’s notion: ‘la trace’ as ‘track’ in Putnam’s translation of his book and as ‘trace’ in Spivak’s translation of Derrida’s work. In this paper I will show how tracks and traces have been brought together in my overall experience of doing archival research that has underpinned the writing of this book. In doing this I will talk about the importance of geography in tuning the researcher into ‘other times’ and ‘other spaces’, the theme that is at the heart of my contribution and which has been differently deployed in archival projects that I have carried out over the years. I will finally show how these geographical experiences have been symbolically transformed into maps and images in blogs that I have created around my publications on women garment workers’ narratives.
Last updated: 30 January 2017
