Sites of Truth or Metaphors of Power? Refiguring the Archive

Abstract

Historians have made extensive use of archives for retrieving knowledge about the sporting past. Indeed, most practitioners will agree that archives are indispensable storehouses of sources, particularly official documents. But some historians are also taking a second look at archives. Rather than conceptualizing archives as sites of knowledge, they view them as sites of power. This article examines the place of archives in sport history and looks at the growing scepticism in them as sites of historical knowledge. Drawing on examples from sport history that lend support to archive sceptics, this article calls on sport historians to refigure the archive. Refiguring refers to the processes of questioning the privileged place of archives in historical practice, opening them to ‘critical inspection’ and articulating their contexts.