Term · Method
The Archive
Institutions and collections that preserve documents and objects — and, by selection, decide what counts as evidence.
Archives are not neutral storehouses. Someone decides what to collect, how to catalogue it, and who may consult it. Records produced by states, churches, courts, and commercial theatres are far more likely to survive than those of people who were policed, enslaved, colonised, poor, or illiterate in the dominant language.
Scholars increasingly read archives 'against the grain', looking for what the record's makers did not intend to reveal, and 'along the grain', studying the logic of the archive itself.