Colonial archives contain credibility hierarchies weighting some witnesses as trustworthy

Evidence

Wedged within those folds of truth-claims emerges something else: uncensored turns of phrase, loud asides in the imperative tense, hesitant asides in sotto voce. These register confused assessments, parenthetic doubts about what might count as evidence, the records of eyewitnesses with dubious credentials, dismissed rumors laced with pertinent truths, contradictory testimonies called upon and quickly discarded. These too were assessments that implicitly weighed the stature and sensibility of their authors, and the distance that separated their words from the received scenarios of colonial common sense. In chapter 6, I refer to these as elements that make up a “hierarchy of credibility,” scales of trust that measured what forms of witness, words and deeds, could be taken as reliably relevant. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 144

Categorization

• DEFINE: Introduces the concept of a ‘hierarchy of credibility’ as scales of trust measuring which witnesses and words count as reliably relevant in colonial record-keeping.