Abstract
In the modern period, nation-states have been the major guardians of public memory, funding both archives and museums as key institutions for the preservation and transmission of such memory. Abigail De Kosnik argues in this book that digital networked media have been changing this over the past three decades, so loosening the ties that bind public memory to the state. A multitude of self-designated archivists have become practitioners of cultural preservation. Amateurs, fans, pirates, hackers and volunteers have constructed rogue archives on the Internet. De Kosnik contends that this shift has democratised the conditions and practices of cultural memory, with their repositories being freely available to everybody, with no regard being paid to copyright restrictions, and with the content of those repositories often containing material that was never handled by traditional memory institutions. It is, in other words, a turn from locked rooms to information commons. Dealing in the main with fan fiction archives, among other things the book discusses various kinds of rogue archives, the communities they serve, and the incentives and challenges to fans provided by digital archivists. Its examples of rogue archives include the Internet Archive, Project Gutenberg, ibiblio, the Rhizome ArtBase, and many smaller, lesser-known archives founded by particular subcultures, minority groups, and artists’ collectives, with fan fiction archives being the core case study. The book also draws on an oral history project, conducted from June 2012 to March 2013, on fan fiction and Internet memory. The stance taken throughout is affirmative and approbatory of the innovative and creative practices of cultural memory production and appropriation De Kosnik discusses and analyses in close and extensive detail. She argues in their favour, especially over and against the conventional, state-linked archive of the pre-digital period.