Keynote Address

Prof. Nevine El Nossery, University of Wisconsin–Madison

What remains when the archive itself becomes ruin? We inhabit a historical moment in which war, genocide, settler colonialism, ecological collapse, and algorithmic governance converge to reshape memory and political life. In this context, the archive can no longer be understood as a stable repository of history but as a contested terrain, vulnerable to erasure, manipulation, and destruction. Libraries and museums have become sites of struggle over historical legitimacy and political power, increasingly transformed into ruins.

This keynote explores what I call the ruins of the archive: fractured spaces where official regimes of preservation have been damaged or dismantled, yet memory persists through alternative forms of transmission. Drawing on decolonial theory, postcolonial critique, memory studies, and scholarship on counter-archives, I examine how literature, cinema, performative art, community initiatives, and pedagogy function as living archives that resist epistemic violence and unsettle dominant regimes of knowledge.

Focusing on examples from the Global South, I examine cultural practices that transform memory into resistance and ethical responsibility. Particular attention is given to contexts where the destruction of human lives is accompanied by the devastation of educational, cultural, and epistemic infrastructures, revealing the intimate relationship between cultural erasure and systems of domination. Yet within these landscapes of devastation, artists, filmmakers, writers, educators, activists, and communities continue to create counter-archives and archives vivantes that sustain collective memory and imagine futures beyond colonial and authoritarian frameworks.

Rather than asking what remains after the archive, this talk asks how memory survives, circulates, and is continually reconstituted through its ruins. I argue that the most vital archives of our present—and perhaps our future—reside not only in institutions but in relational and communal practices of remembrance. The ruins of the archive are therefore not merely sites of loss; they are generative spaces from which new forms of knowledge, solidarity, cultural survival, and decolonial futurity emerge.

 Please Note: A/V Not Supported

Since installing and maintaining projectors and screens in the convention venue’s presentation rooms is cost-prohibitive, the MMLA will not be supplying the A/V equipment or technicians needed to support slide projection at its 2026 Convention.  Presenters interested in supplementing their spoken remarks with visual aids are encouraged to bring printed handouts to distribute to audience members attending their sessions.  Alternatively, presenters may wish to distribute QR codes enabling audience members to view a remote slide presentation on their mobile devices, as described in the YouTube video linked here.  Please direct all technical questions about such alternatives to the information technology support staff at your institution.