Archival power operates at distinct moments of creation versus assembly and legitimation.

Evidence

Michel-Rolph Trouillot noted with consummate clarity that “historical narratives are premised on previous understandings, which are themselves premised on the distribution of archival power.” More importantly, he offered neophytes to archival work a way to tackle what De Certeau meant by “historiographic operations” by distinguishing the archival power lodged in moments of creation from practices of assembly, retrieval, and disciplinary legitimation. If Trouillot urged students to distinguish among these different operations, Nicholas Dirks’ call for “a biography of the archive” insisted on examining who was performing that labor by showing to what extent early colonial officials cum historians in British India were dependent on native informants who did the work of collection and cultural translation for them. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 309

Categorization

• XREF: Trouillot’s distinction between archival power at creation vs. assembly stages maps directly onto the reader’s colonial archival focus.
• DEFINE: Defines the analytical distinction between moments of archival creation versus practices of retrieval and legitimation.