The Archive, Public History and the Essential Truth: The TRC Reading the Past

At a lecture presented in London on 5 June 1994, Jacques Derrida discussed the complexities of the meaning of the archive. He described the duality in meaning of the word ‘archive’, in terms of temporality and spatiality as a place of ‘commencement’, and as the place ‘where men and gods command’ or the ‘place from which order is given’.1