Archival form itself constitutes a technology of colonial governance

Evidence

I ask what insights into the social imaginaries of colonial rule might be gained from attending not only to colonialism’s archival content, but to the principles and practices of governance lodged in particular archival forms. By “archival form” I allude to several things: prose style, repetitive refrain, the arts of persuasion, affective strains that shape “rational” response, categories of confidentiality and classification, and not least, genres of documentation. The book’s focus is on archiving-as-process rather than archives-as-things. Most importantly, it looks to archives as condensed sites of epistemological and political anxiety rather than as skewed and biased sources. These colonial archives were both transparencies on which power relations were inscribed and intricate technologies of rule in themselves. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 128

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the key analytical concept ‘archival form’ — prose style, refrain, persuasion, affect, classification, genre — and frames archiving-as-process.