Historiographically insignificant ‘non-events’ can reveal colonial epistemic anxieties better than major episodes.

Evidence

Many of the “events” on which I focus here are really not “events” at all. Sometimes, as in chapter 4, I refer to them as “non-events” since they are records of things that never happened. Similarly, often those events to which I attend are not those that figure as central in the colonial and postcolonial historiography of the Netherlands Indies. In fact, many of them would be considered to have little consequence. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 50

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth pursuing: what methodological warrant justifies reading absence — records of things that never happened — as weighty historical evidence?
• XREF: Echoes microhistory and Stoler’s interest in the minor register; also resonates with Gayatri Spivak on the archive and the ‘native informant,’ and subaltern studies’ reading of gaps.