The archival factory of the “Dreyfus Affairs”: History, evolutions, recommendations
Type de matériel :
TexteLangue : français Détails de publication : 2023.
Sujet(s) : Ressources en ligne : Abrégé : More than 125 years after the Court of Cassation completed the work of rehabilitating Alfred Dreyfus by pronouncing the judgment of 12 July, 1906, the judicial file on the case of the captain accused of high treason still raises new questions. The questions examined in this article concern the origin and the future of these archival documents, currently preserved in the French National Archives, as part of the Ministry of Justice BB/19 sub-series. The nonconformity that has characterized the archiving of these documents since they were first transferred has obscured the associated finding aids. As a result, the latter are of little service to historians, who are hardly able to unravel the classification logic and procedures used in creating the various subsets of this fonds. Moreover, the judicial file brings together documents related to several cases, both criminal and civil, involving, among others, military courts. By analyzing the mechanics of the formation of this historical documentation, the article discusses the unusual material conditions that have marked the history of this corpus, from the ruling of the Court of Cassation to the present day. lmmersing oneself in the archival material of the “Dreyfus archives” implies grasping the organization and functioning of the highest French court, which underwent profound changes at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, anyone wishing to study this documentation from an archival point of view will inevitably be confronted by the lack of transparency surrounding it, starting with the “secret file,” one of the components of the judicial file which was separated from the rest of the documents in 1906 and is now kept at the Service Historique de la Défense in Vincennes. The atypical materiality of these archival documents will also be discussed. This characteristic further complicates any attempt at reclassification as it is very difficult to link the hundreds of iconographic documents from the various graphological assessments presented by Alphonse Bertillon to the rest of the written documentation. The recommendations presented here aim to remedy these difficulties in part by presenting the foundations of a new finding aid centered on the relationships between the services that produce these archival documents and the various judicial cases associated with them. In light of the projects for the conservation and restoration of these documents implemented over the last two decades, several recommendations in continuity with those formulated by Vincent Duclert in the late 1990s will enable future research actors to apprehend the singularity of these archival documents before adopting any historical approach.
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More than 125 years after the Court of Cassation completed the work of rehabilitating Alfred Dreyfus by pronouncing the judgment of 12 July, 1906, the judicial file on the case of the captain accused of high treason still raises new questions. The questions examined in this article concern the origin and the future of these archival documents, currently preserved in the French National Archives, as part of the Ministry of Justice BB/19 sub-series. The nonconformity that has characterized the archiving of these documents since they were first transferred has obscured the associated finding aids. As a result, the latter are of little service to historians, who are hardly able to unravel the classification logic and procedures used in creating the various subsets of this fonds. Moreover, the judicial file brings together documents related to several cases, both criminal and civil, involving, among others, military courts. By analyzing the mechanics of the formation of this historical documentation, the article discusses the unusual material conditions that have marked the history of this corpus, from the ruling of the Court of Cassation to the present day. lmmersing oneself in the archival material of the “Dreyfus archives” implies grasping the organization and functioning of the highest French court, which underwent profound changes at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, anyone wishing to study this documentation from an archival point of view will inevitably be confronted by the lack of transparency surrounding it, starting with the “secret file,” one of the components of the judicial file which was separated from the rest of the documents in 1906 and is now kept at the Service Historique de la Défense in Vincennes. The atypical materiality of these archival documents will also be discussed. This characteristic further complicates any attempt at reclassification as it is very difficult to link the hundreds of iconographic documents from the various graphological assessments presented by Alphonse Bertillon to the rest of the written documentation. The recommendations presented here aim to remedy these difficulties in part by presenting the foundations of a new finding aid centered on the relationships between the services that produce these archival documents and the various judicial cases associated with them. In light of the projects for the conservation and restoration of these documents implemented over the last two decades, several recommendations in continuity with those formulated by Vincent Duclert in the late 1990s will enable future research actors to apprehend the singularity of these archival documents before adopting any historical approach.




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