The Archive as a World-Making Apparatus in the Anthropocene

Abstract

This text aims to explore the archive as a powerful force that shapes life. Consequently, it seeks to develop an ethical framework for the archive from a feminist perspective. De-extinction can be linked to the archive as a stabilizing apparatus and a scene of responsibility (Wolfe 2018) that entails our ethical commitment to acknowledge the radical passivity of those who no longer exist in this world, both as individuals and species. This scene of responsibility is intertwined with the agency of the archive. In other words, the archive acts as a life-creating apparatus by shaping the conditions for reading, the future, and, to some extent, reality itself. By establishing the foundations for an ethics of the archive as a practice that creates life, this text aims to reframe the discourse surrounding extinction and de-extinction.