Accountability to a colonial system can reframe private letters meant only for oneself

Evidence

His reports were unwelcome, inappropriate, and late. Quickly transferred out of Deli, he was dismissed shortly after. Much of the rest of his life was spent composing what seem to have been unsent letters to the Governor-General, by whom he felt betrayed, in a desperate effort to rewrite his moral contract with the colonial administration, to account for his actions, and restore his honor. If we can only give an account of ourselves, as Judith Butler’s parse on Nietzsche suggests, when we “are rendered accountable by a system of justice and punishment,” life in Deli was that for Valck. As noted, there is no evidence that his letters were ever sent. Nor do we know why he kept so many undated drafts of them. Perhaps they were all along really only meant for himself. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 1358

Categorization

• XREF: Valck’s unsent letters echo the ‘moral contract’ idea and connect to Stoler’s broader argument about colonial agents’ interior worlds; also resonates with epistolary self-accounting in archival theory.
• QUESTION: Why would a dismissed official keep undated drafts of unsent self-exonerating letters? What function did composition serve beyond correspondence?