“No, I Promise I Need This”
Nostalgia, Archive Fever, and Other Notes on Collecting and Preserving
I wouldn’t say that I’m a hoarder. If anything, the way that I have lived my life has made hoarding impossible—it’s not easy to move from one city to the next with anything more than a suitcase or two, with zippers exploding from the pressure of keeping all my prized possessions inside. However, despite the physical limitations placed upon me by a pseudo-nomadic lifestyle, I do love to collect things. I fall victim to nostalgia and the impulse to preserve nearly every day.
Throughout my life, I’ve accumulated collections of things that remind me of who I am and what is meaningful to me. Most of these things end up shoved into dusty storage spaces, waiting for me to rediscover them years down the line. In fact, this is exactly what happened to me very recently. A few weeks ago, I found myself digging through boxes of old keepsakes and trinkets, ruminating on why exactly I get so much joy out of collecting things.
Why Do We Collect Things?
Even more than the actual act of keeping things, I find the impulse and thought behind this action fascinating. What is it that drives us to put an object in a box and keep it for the rest of our lives?
On a very scholarly, philosophical note: it’s archive fever. This is a concept I came across while begrudgingly reading Derrida in graduate school. At its core, archive fever (le mal d’archive) refers to a passionate drive to preserve memory. According to Derrida, as humans we all have “a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive”, whether we realize it or not. [1] We have been creating archives and memory collections for all of human history, because the preservation of memory is a deeply human impulse. [2]
On a less pretentious and annoying note: it’s nostalgia. Plain and simple. We tend to get those warm, sentimental feelings when we think about good moments from our past, and objects are powerful carriers of those memories. Even a little scrap of paper or a ticket stub can hold the story of a complex, beautiful moment in time.
Remembering Who We Once Were
In “On Keeping a Notebook”, Joan Didion makes a powerful point about the importance of writing in notebooks and journals: we don’t write simply to have a record of what has happened in our lives, instead we write to have a record of all the people we once were. “I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be,” writes Didion, “whether we find them attractive company or not. […] It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about.” [3]
If pages scrawled in a notebook can give us a window into the people we used to be, I think we can get that same kind of view by looking at the things we’ve collected. The things we’ve decided to keep throughout our lives may not necessarily have profound, deep implications for the people we are today—but each object was important enough for a past version of ourselves to keep.
At 24 years old, I am an out and proud lesbian… but of course I still keep the ring that the boy next door gave me for Valentine’s Day back when I was 11. It’s neon orange and shaped like a little robot—certainly a relic of its time. If some guy living next door tried to give the present version of me a neon orange robot ring, I don’t think I’d ever leave my house again. But to a younger version of myself who didn’t know the plethora of Big Realizations that were to come, this ring from the boy next door was a treasure. Today, it’s a representation of who I was in that moment.
On that personal and deeply embarrassing note, let’s take a look at some of the things I recently discovered while combing through boxes of memorabilia
A Peek into Some of My Keepsakes
A sketch of me that my grandpa did in summer 2021. This was during one of our many usual visits to my grandparents’ house each summer, where we all sit around and talk for hours. I love to lounge on their red leather couches with my feet propped up on the huge wooden chest in the middle of the room, where inside my grandma stores her many homemade quilts.
My third grade science fair project, which I am certain my mom did far more work for than I did. The sketch of a pinto bean really ties the whole thing together, and solidifies that I did not inherent any of my grandpa’s artistic skills.
An endless amount of tickets! Included in this photo are tickets from Broadway shows and NWSL games—two events that are pretty representative of my lifelong interests, thus far.
My little red beret. Purchased in Paris when I was three years old, I’ve kept this beret for years (even though it no longer fits me) as a reminder of an amazing roadtrip with my parents. I truly think that trip around Europe is what kickstarted my endless love for travel and learning about history.
The postcard my mom gave me on her last day helping me move into college. At 18, I made the choice to move by myself to the Netherlands, and my mom was kind enough to come with me for a few days to help me get settled. On one of these days, I was busy doing orientation activities and she took a day trip to The Hague, where she got me this postcard and wrote a note on the back that I read again and again every time I got helplessly homesick that first semester.
These are just a few of the many, many things I’ve held onto throughout my life, and that I will continue to hold onto for years to come. So, what have you collected?
Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever. p.91
Of course, with the feverish impulse to create archives also comes the “death drive”—the idea that the action of preserving memories consequently means that certain memories get left out in the process. However, I have no patience right now to talk about Freud and pretend like that icky man doesn’t piss me off endlessly—so that’s a conversation for another day!
Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem. pp.139-140