Along the Archival Grain

Along the Archival Grainexamines the nature of colonial governance as seen through its archival habits and conventions, and in doing so offers a series of nuanced meditations on the nature of archives and the spirit with which students of empire should approach them. Focusing on the archives of the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Stoler reveals not the panoptic gaze of an omniscient colonial state but rather the uncertain knowledge of those who governed, the disquieting unease that resulted when credibility was in question and evidence was suspect, and the anxious flux of colonial common sense when rumors proved more reliable than facts. Here the archives are not just a record of rule but an active force with violent effect. Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the lettered lives of those who ruled, Stoler seizes on moments when ready narratives failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to work. At the heart of this book are agents and architects of empire haunted by epistemic anxiety about how to assess political disse't and distinguish racial categories and social kinds. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Attending to hesitant, uncensored, and confused assessments and asides, Stoler offers a unique methodological and analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance and the political content of archival forms.