Partial readings: addressing a Renaissance archive

By considering a variety of readings of Renaissance Florence from Burckhard t to the present, this article discusses the nature of the interrelation be tween the archive and the historian, with a view to illustrating the partia lity of both. The records contained within the archives are by nature fragm entary; vestiges of the past, they are also partial in the sense of being s ubjective, testimonies to past relationships either between individuals or between individuals and institutions - social or political. Likewise, the r eadings of historians are partial both in the sense that the historian's re search is focused upon particular parts of the archive and in his or her su bjectivity as an historian. Interestingly, in this context post-Burckhardti an Florentine historiography shares common ground, however unwittingly, wit h certain aspects of postmodern writing in decentring the subject, for obse rvations concerning the partial subjectivity of Burckhardt's Renaissance in dividual apply equally to observations concerning the partial subjectivity of historians as writers. The fiction of an objective historical method pro ducing hard history becomes apparent once the static relation of historian as subject researching the archive as object is reconfigured as a dynamic a nd dialectical process. Through the acknowledging of the contingency of suc h archival readings it becomes apparent that the archive itself is a symbol ic construct constituted through the process of writing.