Mal d'archive: on the growth of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-project

In Archive Fever, Derrida opens a critical perspective on the status of the trace as that which remains with his reading of Gradiva, the Pompeian fantasy woman who is supposed to have left her singular toe-print in the ash of Vesuvius. This article returns to the figure of Gradiva as emblem for the non-coincidence of origin and trace, in order to outline the (increasingly troubling) archival aspects of Gunter Demnig's Stolperstein-project, a large-scale, decentralized memorial commemorating those deported under National Socialism. Returning to the site of a missed encounter, Demnig attempts to reinscribe the trace of those who vanished there. But as his project grows, it also shows signs of archive fever, betraying a desire to take possession of the trace of the other, and revealing how, as Derrida describes, the archive does not exist without the political control of memory.