Things-in-themselves? But they're fine, thank you very much. And how are you? You complain about things that have not been honored by your vision? You feel that these things are lacking the illumination of your consciousness? But if you missed the galloping freedom of the zebras in the Savannah this morning, then so much the worse for you; the zebras will not be sorry that you were not there, and in any case you would have tamed, killed, photographed, or studied them. Things in themselves lack nothing, just as Africa did not lack whites before their arrival.
Suzanne Briet, a historian, poet, and visionary best known for her treatise, the manifesto on the nature of documentation, „What is Documentation?“ a foundational text in the modern study of information science, addressed the extension of the meaning of "document" with unusual directness. Briet starts with the assertion that "A document is evidence in support of a fact." She then elaborates a document as "any physical or symbolic sign, preserved or recorded, intended to represent, to reconstruct, or to demonstrate a physical or conceptual phenomenon." The implication is that documentation should not be concerned with texts but with access to evidence. It questions and expands the traditional understanding of what constitutes a document. It means that a document can be any tangible or intangible (symbolic) item that has been intentionally saved or recorded to represent, reconstruct, or prove the existence or nature of something that can be either material (physical) or abstract (conceptual).
Her perspective illustrating the example of an antelope's journey from being captured in Africa to its various representations and transformations in Europe demonstrates the breadth of what can be considered a document. Briet emphasized that once an event enters public knowledge, it generates a "veil of documents," (Raymond Bayer). The antelope's existence spans various forms - from being a live exhibit in a zoo to a subject of scientific study and then as a muse for artistic representations like paintings and films. Each stage of its existence represents a form of documentation. Building on Briet's ideas, Michael Buckland further developed the concept of a document, reinforcing the notion that documents not only communicate but also interrelate social practices. Briet's work opened new expectations for what an archive is beyond textual evidence to encompass any form of material evidence. This perspective led to intriguing questions like, "Is a living animal a document?" or "Can a rabbit be a document? Or a moon?"
In Archeology of the Knowledge (1969), Michel Foucault discussed the transformation in the practice of history and the concept of a document. He notes that history, which traditionally focused on memorializing the past by converting physical monuments into documents, giving voice to silent traces, has shifted its approach. History now seeks to reconstitute these documents back into monuments. Where history once aimed to decipher the silent marks people left behind, it now endeavors to organize and interconnect these traces to tell complete stories. Archeology, which aspired to resemble history through contextualizing silent artifacts, now observes history adopting its methods. History now looks closely into the detailed description of monuments, mirroring the archaeological focus on tangible evidence. This evolution, writes Foucault in 1969, marks a significant shift in how these disciplines engage with and interpret the past.
Ross Exo Adams suggests leaving traditional archives and proposes that landscapes, can be seen as archives that store social, political and cultural history. However, he also notes that simply recognizing landscapes as archives can sometimes remove their political significance. According to Adams, it's crucial not only to recognize the landscape's role as an archive, as a self-evident category of natural, ‘apolitical’ truth. But to „actively interact with the landscape's historical layers, engage with the knowledge it contains and confront difficult aspects of history. “
What about soil? Can soil be perceived as an archive, as a set of documents with the potential to influence current and future political discussions?
To avoid the apolitical pitfall of post-history of which Exo Adams warns, it is important to look at soil in its complex materiality and not as an abstraction
What exactly does it mean when we talk about documents as physical, tangible items that serve as evidence of social relations, investigating how history can be reassembled through the contextualization of silent objects that stand around while we innocently rest our gaze on the landscape as a self-evident category of natural, ‘apolitical’ truth?
Let us look closely at the thought-provoking presentation at the "Life of Crops" conference in Graz in November 2019, where Alfredo González-Ruibal, an archaeologist immersed in the legacies of slavery and the Spanish Civil War, unveiled the concept of soil as a repository of counter-memory. González-Ruibal's methodology indicates the physical properties of soil, guiding archaeologists on where to dig and what to anticipate, thus unveiling the politics deeply embedded within the soil as an archive. By shifting focus from fertile soil to elements like sand, silt, ash, or even fecal sludge, he unearths stories of suppression, erasure, and repression that are often overlooked.
This concept directly challenges the dematerialized and aestheticized views of soil under the fascist ideology of "Blut und Boden," advocating instead for a tangible, material approach to soil that reveals hidden layers of history and truth. This shift is exemplified in his work on Spanish concentration camps from 1937 to 1939, where he particularly drew special attention to the excavation of latrines at the Castuera camp. Beyond serving their apparent function, these latrines were revealed as sites of profound humiliation and punishment. The excavation process, meticulously undertaken by González-Ruibal and his team, uncovered everyday objects like medicine bottles, mess tins, and tin cans, which, while mundane, narrate the grim realities of life within the camp.
The decision to excavate latrines was twofold: to recover artifacts rich in historical value and to reveal the systemic dehumanization inflicted upon prisoners. The act of forced public defecation, under the mocking eyes of guards, was a deliberate tactic of psychological torture that González-Ruibal argues has been largely silenced in historical narratives. The excavation day's unexpected rainstorm in Castuera, causing the trenches to overflow and release a powerful stench, symbolically broke the silence around the camp's history.
“It was the stench of shit, of all the shit that was shat by Republican prisoners for one year. Shit from thousands of prisoners using the latrines every day. The people in Castuera do not want to talk about the camp. They do not go there. Many even deny its existence, others simply do not know or claim not to know. Except for the work of a few activists, the camp has been silenced. The reactivation of faecal sludge under the rain, however, broke that silence in a brutal way. “Nothing has been so much part of one as that which turns into excrement,”, wrote Elias Canetti, (1962: 210-211) “The excrement, which is what remains of all this [digestive process], is loaded with our whole blood guilt. By it, we know what we have murdered. It is the compressed sum of all the evidence against us. It is our daily and continuing sin and, as such, it stinks and cries to heaven. ”The faecal sludge of Castuera tells about our sins. It refuses to go. It stinks and it sticks.“
González-Ruibal's approach to soil as an archive goes beyond traditional archaeological practices, viewing soil not merely as a historical layer but as an active memory holder. He engages with soil not just as a scientific endeavor, but as an ethical pursuit to uncover the truths buried beneath our feet. This work is vital in contexts where there's a resistance to acknowledging the dark chapters of history, looking at the soil as a holder of past atrocities, and continuing to inform and confront contemporary understandings of history and memory.
Alfredo González-Ruibal's exploration of soil as a counter-memory, presented in Graz in 2019, challenges the idea of archiving and construction of dominant narratives by preserving memories irrespective of our intent. By focusing on the non-visible and sometimes identifiable remnants of our everyday life, highand the capacity to archive complex, superimposed narratives. This approach not only recovers the overlooked but also prompts us to reflect on the political and social implications of what remains hidden in our historical archives, urging a reevaluation of the unknown and the unseen. We are invited to find our ways that opens the in-between space, where we can look for the non-identifiable reminder of what was hidden, overlooked, or unconsidered. The surplus of debased matter that is a material reminder that opens up a real space for the suppressed and the unknown.
