An Apophatics of the Archive: In Memoriam Reverend Doctor Florence Li Tim-Oi

Abstract

This chapter begins as a work of performance ethnography wherein Chambers investigates the commemorative practices of an Anglican church community in Hong Kong in order to comment on the significance not only of the commemorated subject—the first woman in the world to be ordained a priest within the Anglican Communion, the Reverend Doctor Florence Li Tim-Oi—but also the living archive of commemoration itself. The story of Li Tim-Oi retold in this chapter illustrates the apophatics of the archive as absence, as precedent, as excess, and as event (advent and epiphany). As a ‘living void’ the archive is apophatic performance, yielding negative knowledge of past and absent presences through what remains eternally unavailable.