Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria

Project Information

ARCHIVWAR

Grant agreement ID: 101064513

DOI

10.3030/101064513

Project closed

EC signature date 18 May 2022

Start date 1 October 2022

End date 31 March 2026

Funded under

• Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)

Total cost

No data

EU contribution

€ 256 442,88

Coordinated by

UNIVERSITA CA' FOSCARI VENEZIA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - ARCHIVWAR (Archives in Times of War: Scattered Families and Vanishing Past in Contemporary Syria)

Reporting period: 2022-10-01 to 2024-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

What happen to state archives in wartime? What is the predicament of the documents stored in these repositories in times of political upheaval and dislocation? Archivwar answers these questions by examining the afterlife of the archives of legal identity in wartime Syria. Since 2011, Syrian state archives and legal documents have fallen victim to evacuation, destruction and plundering. As some edifices containing these archives and their documents are destroyed, others are subject to an upsurge of new documents produced by Syrian state authorities in response to the return and ‘reintegration’ of Syrians from displacement and rebel-controlled areas. Simultaneously, Syrians in the diaspora have been saving and retrieving copies of mundane legal papers originally stored in state archives as these documents are official proof of legal identities, education and relations to kin and land. These papers are fundamental in any migratory project, from displacement in Lebanon to asylum in Europe, where they are needed for numerous procedures, such as getting married. These papers are also central in preserving a connection to family members in Syria and in the diaspora. As old state archives are now dislocated and scattered in private, domestic archives, wartime Syria offers a novel configuration to rethink the archive and its ties to documents and people, social relations and histories contained in it.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Archivwar examines diasporic Syrian families' archives and archival practices as well as forms of care that underpin them in order to rethink the archives as a form of care beyond a state-centric approach. Indeed, these archives are ingrained in the complex transnational circuits of people, objects, memories and relations within Syrian families and their reconfiguration in light of the war and migration. The action combines anthropological methods with oral history research in an original and interdisciplinary format through its collaborative historical reconstruction. This novel research method is based on the research participant leading the archival reading that becomes a mode not only to examine the nature of these archives and their content, but also to unearth the (hi)stories and relations stored in them. These (hi)stories and relations are also part of the research participant's life across borders and shaped by different legal-bureaucratic systems, their frictions and contradictions.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

The action has achieved important results in developing a new epistemological and methodological framework to approach and analyse the archive beyond just the dichotomy of being either against or along the archival grain. By dissecting the archive into types of intimate and violent sites of a family's social reproduction, the project introduces the concept of care into the analysis of the archive and into the relationship developed with research participants, which contributes to the heretofore limited literature on the concept of care and its relation to legal-bureaucratic state apparatuses.

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