Bureaucratic selective practices shape which historical events become visible.
Evidence
Institutions create shadowed places in which nothing can be seen and no questions asked. They make other areas show in finely discriminated detail, which is closely scrutinized and or- dered. History emerges in an unintended shape as a result of practices directed to immediate, practical ends. To watch these practices establish selective principles that highlight some kinds of events and obscure others is to inspect the social order operat- ing on individual minds. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 153
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- XREF: Echoes the well-known archive-as-shadows framing from Stoler’s prior work; also connects to Derrida’s archive fever debates.
Related
- Historical knowledge gets co-opted for administrative manipulation (similarity 0.90)
- Institutional bureaucratic practices secretly shape which historical events get recorded (similarity 0.87)
- Institutional filing practices shape historical memory by highlighting some events and obscuring others (similarity 0.84)
Broader Connections
- The administrative cribbing of reports determined which event readings became evidence
#exemplifies(0.80) - Colonial archival history requires spanning both actual events and officials’ imagined futures
#expands(0.75) - Information asymmetries result from bureaucratic structures rather than merely legal inadequacies.
#expands(0.70)