‘The Archive without Museums Hal Foster October, Vol. 77. Summer, 1996), pp. 97-119. Stable URL: fip:flinks jstor-org/sici sici=0162-28 70% 28 199622%2977%3C97%3ATAWM®3E2.0,CO@3B2-X October is cutrently published by The MIT Press, Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at flip: feworwjtor org/aboutterms.htmal. ISTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in par, that unless you fave obtained pcior permission, you may not dowaload an cnt isus of @ journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content inthe ISTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial uss. Please contact the publisher cegarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at bhupsferwer,jstor.orp/joumals/mitpress.htrl. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transtnission. ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding ISTOR, please contact support @jstor.org- up:thvww stor orgy ‘Thu Sep 28 06:32:16 2006The Archive without Museums HAL FOSTER, Condiians af Possibly In 1928, ia an essay on “the Formal method in European art scholacsi Mikhail Bakhtin and Pavel Medvedes associated the becoming-academic of art history at che end of the nineteenth century with the becoming-autonomous of modernist art during the same time.! In particular chey related two aspects of this history to two atributes of chat art its foregrounding of “the constructive aspect” of the art work, and its attention to “alien art” in an imperialist age. Indirectly, the fist oriented art history to formal questions (as with Heinrich Walfflia}, and the second to different Kunstuntlons or acitic wills (35 with Alots Riegl Might the discourse of visual culture? at the end of the Gventieth century depend on «wo paralel preconditions —on che foregrounding of the visual virtuality of comtemporary media, ane! on che attention to cultural multiplicity in a post colonial agc?® A third parallel might be propose straightaway. Art history reliod fon techniques of reprducion to abstract a wide cange of objects into a system oF sigle—as defined in diacritical terms by Wallin ia The Principles af Art History (1915) eg, apen versus closed composition, linear versus painterly technique}, fo in crosicultaral affinities by André Maleaux in ~The Muscurn without Walls {begun 1985), the firs version of The Foie of Silence (1951), Might visual culture rely on techniques of monmation co teansform a wide range of madruns int a systema (of image toda database of digital terms, an archive without museums? Already apparent in the pedagogy of tne lantect-slide, the discursive effects of photo graphic reproduction were not thought through until the {980s. What are the 1 See MM Bakhrin and P.M. Medvedew, Ph Formal Maha i FtwarySchtercip cans, Aber Wiehe (Cambridge: Harvard Univeraty Pres, 1989), pp 41-5 2 “Herel define "wsual cure” ment in elation 19 at Retory. As hoth am academic rbtic and Seclal description, the ter totaltns peematsrely Buc ke oye cannge be wed sway, mow bogie the Contest ovr Hts meanings 20d =ppleatons Or course, the arthisorical eengnition of other Kuntaalans was paral, and, acknowledged Beall they were usually slated into a Hegelian narrative centered on Western 2ti Na doubt nse ule wil develop its oun vers.on of th fethtine econ tion-and-dissvowal nat a Hegelian s4ble Non, perbapsa mueculral bustin OCTOBER 77, Sumer 1996, pp. 99-114 © 1996 Hol Fes