The Archive Fever (Jacques Derrida)

"The Archive Fever" by Jacques Derrida explores how the human desire to preserve and organize memory through archives reflects a deeper obsession with control, history, and identity. Derrida examines how archives shape our understanding of the past, often revealing an underlying compulsion to remember and classify everything, which can also suppress certain memories or histories. This "fever" signals an innate urge to hold onto the past, but it also questions whether true access to all memories is possible, highlighting the complex relationship between memory, meaning, and the act of archiving itself.