Colonial documents systematically erased facts of subjugation and recast colonized violence as inherent unreason.

Evidence

In Ranajit Guha’s influential formulations, colonial documents were rhetorical sleights-of-hand that erased the facts of subjugation, reclassified petty crime as political subversion, or located violence and unreason as inherent to the colonized. The analytic tactics pursued have been those of inversion and recuperation, recasting colonial subjects as agents who made and make choices and critiques of their own. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 304

Categorization

• XREF: This connects directly to the reader’s stated purpose on colonial archival epistemic anxieties — Guha’s subaltern studies framing of documents as rhetorical sleights-of-hand.
• SEED: Source material for an essay on how administrative document genres rhetorically produced colonial ‘facts’ about rebellion and criminality.