Obligations Towards ‘Re-Housing’ ‘Memory-In-Exile’ and ‘Persons and Heritage-In-Extremis’: From Archons to Besieged Subjects and Beyond

This paper is a thought piece and a journey of critical archival questing - although not a redemptive journey – it is engaged with in order to openup points of archival potency, paradox and possibility for further critical reflection, reconfiguration and action. Given that this archival quest has been undertaken at a contemporary moment in which many thousands more displaced persons - refugees and migrants – risk their lives undertaking journeys to various ‘promised lands’ they may never see nor enter, I argue the obligation to return to, reconnect with and re-work the recurring motif that links diverse archival constituencies across space and time and that reminds us that the first, original constituency of the archive is that of the ‘figure of exile’ and of persons and heritage in extremis. This in turn demands that Derridean archival-heritage questions of the ‘future’, of ‘promise’ and of ‘responsibility for tomorrow’ be bound up and reconfigured within the foundational responsibility to ‘re-house’ and ‘give refuge’ to ‘memoryin- exile’ and ‘persons and heritage-in-extremis’ and crucially too to develop new operational strategies to direct these towards understanding and empowering these ‘besieged subjects’ in the present [1-3].