Facing the Apartheid Archive, or, of archons and researchers

The Apartheid Archives project collects narratives of Apartheid experiences, which are archived and provide source material for academic research. Using selected writings of the philosophers, Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas with Which to buttress its arguments, this article maintains that a particular ethical responsibility accrues, fundamentally, to the researcher of the post-Apartheid archive. Indeed, it is argued that this researcher, as an archon, does not guard or collect a past as much as it Offers a future, and is oriented towards a messianic justice.