Archives are cultural spaces, not just document collections, shaped by colonial relations

Evidence

Most students of the colonial, who now work with archives in a reflective mode, treat “the archive” as something in between a set of documents, their institutions, and a repository of memory—both a place and a cultural space that encompass official documents but are not confined to them. Some of the most creative work branches out to the range of scripted and performed practices that bear the psychic and material stamp of colonial relations. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 316

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the reflective ‘archive’ as both place and cultural space encompassing scripted and performed practices.
• XREF: Connects to Ann Stoler’s work and to broader archival theory (Derrida’s Archive Fever, Foucault’s archive concept).