'Archives, multilingual or otherwise, have histories of their own. Jacques Derrida has described those who are the creators of archives as exercising social order (the archons): they employ power through their interpretation of texts and stories of the past. The interrelation between power and knowledge, and the building of a collective, public memory, operates in both the material and metaphorical spaces of the national archive. Archives constitute the set of rules which define the limits and forms of human expression, conservation, memory and appropriation. Bias and subjectivity are structurally part of the official archive through the evaluation appraisal, cataloguing, censoring, description – including errors – preservation and translation of sources. In this way, archives can establish the legitimacy of governments and shape ideas of national history. At the same time, in Foucault’s terms, archives are ‘systems of statements’ as ‘events’ and ‘things’. Although they are governed by institutional infrastructures they cannot really be described in their totality. Also, the material and stories they preserve can challenge or form a threat for the state power.' (Editorial introduction)
