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    Human remains as documents: implications for repatriation
    Berryman, J (Emerald, 2019)
    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to investigate the documentality of human remains in museum and research collections. Secondly, to provide a rationale for a processual model of documentation, which can account for their repatriation and eventual burial. Design/methodology/approach: This paper uses a multidisciplinary approach to examine the repatriation issue. It considers an ethical argument developed to support claims for repatriation: the nominal identification of a body as a universal criterion for its burial. Based on Igor Kopytoff’s processual model of commoditisation, it looks to cultural anthropology to help explain how objects can move between a document and non-document state. Findings: Human remains can be understood as examples of information-as-thing. However, while document theory can readily account for the expanding realm of documentation, it cannot adequately accommodate instances where documentality is revoked, and when something ceases to be a document. When a human biological specimen is returned, the process that made it serve as a document is effectively reversed. When remains are interred, they revert to their primary standing, as people. The process of becoming a document is therefore not unidirectional, and document status not permanent. Research limitations/implications: The implications of a processual model of documentation are discussed. Such a model must be able to account for things as they move into and out of the document state, and where the characteristics of documentality change through time. Originality/value: This paper explores problematic material not usually discussed in relation to document theory. The repatriation movement poses a challenge to a discourse predicated on documentation as a progressively expanding field.
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    A comparison of the German and Russian literary intelligentsia in Arnold Hauser’s Social History of Art
    Berryman, J (Springer Nature B.V., 2019-06)
    To date, critical engagement with Arnold Hauser’s sociology of art has been confined to the field of art history. This perspective has ignored Hauser’s interest in literary history, which I argue is essential to his project. Hauser’s dialectical model, composed of conflicting realist and formalist tendencies, extends to the literary sphere. In The Social History of Art, these two traditions are epitomised by the Russian social novel and German idealism. Anti-enlightenment tendencies in German intellectual culture provide Hauser with evidence of idealism’s propensity for escapism and reaction. Conversely, he extols the Russian social novel as the naturalistic art form par excellence. Because the intelligentsia is central to Hauser’s understanding of the formation of literary culture, this paper provides an outline of his sociology of intellectuals. Through a comparison of the German and Russian literary intelligentsia, this paper shows that Hauser’s analysis of literature is often more complex than his sociological interpretations of the visual arts.
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    Art as document: on conceptual art and documentation
    Berryman, J (EMERALD GROUP PUBLISHING LTD, 2018)
    Purpose The purpose of this paper is to bring the work of Seth Siegelaub (1941–2013) to the attention of document studies. Siegelaub was a pioneer of the conceptual art movement in New York in the 1960s, active as an Art Dealer, Curator and Publisher. He is remembered by art history for his exhibition catalogues, which provided a material base for intangible works of art. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a comparative approach to examine the documents of conceptual art, especially the exhibition catalogues produced by Siegelaub between 1968 and 1972. Drawing on literature from document theory and art history and criticism, it examines several of Siegelaub’s key exhibition catalogues and books. Findings Siegelaub’s theories of information have much in common with the documentalist tradition. Siegelaub’s work is important, not just for its potential to contribute to the literature of document theory. It also provides a point of dialogue between art history and information studies. Originality/value To date, the common ground between art and documentation has been explored almost exclusively from the perspective of art history. This paper is among the first to examine conceptual art from the perspective of document theory. It demonstrates potential for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
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    The young Menzies: the student and legal notebooks of Robert Menzies
    Stone, C ; Berryman, J (University of Melbourne, 2016)