Tracing the Political Lives of Archival Documents

Abstract

This volume explores the ways in which archival documents shape political struggles and influence social change. With case studies from the Pacific, Australasia, Africa, Inner Asia and South America, the articles ethnographically trace the political genealogies of archival documents as they are transformed across space and time. The contributors of this volume engage with a current turn in anthropology towards the documentary process and the material, showing how the aesthetics, form and materiality of documentary work shape the means by which archives exert power. They thus demonstrate how the performance of documentary practices enable particular subject formations, modes of governmentality, new and ongoing expressions of sovereignty and agency, and the circulation of affect. By examining such practices as the conversations that occur in documents' margins, the composite layering of files, the strategies by which documents are extracted from the state, and the means by which documents are re-evaluated and redeployed, this volume offers a dynamic picture of contemporary archival work and an expanded frame for imagining the archival field.

Keywords:

• Archives
• Politics
• Documents
• Aesthetics
• Knowledge

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, The Department of Social Anthropology and the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit, all at Cambridge University, for funding a two day conference entitled “The Political Life of Documents” in January 2010. The articles in this special issue were first presented at this event. We are also grateful to Dr James Urry for making us aware of the vignettes by Strakosch and Cobb, and to Professor Ann Stoler for providing insightful feedback on these papers and the conference's broader themes.