Colonial archives extend beyond official collections into a wider force field of document production

Evidence

“The” colonial archives occupy a space that transcends officially designated archival collections. Mailrapporten and verbalen occupy only part of the force field in which documents were produced. … My interest is not in the finite boundaries of the official state archives but in their surplus production, what defines their interior ridges and porous seams, what closures are transgressed by unanticipated exposition and writerly forms. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 100

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the archival space methodologically as surplus production and porous seams rather than bounded official collections.
• XREF: Builds on Stoler’s and Thomas Richards’ framing of archives as generative force fields rather than passive storehouses.