12 Statements for archival flatness

An archive is a collection that is 'policed ' by archivists. Unlike the library, which has historically been premised on the sharing of reproducible objects, the archive is a collection premised on the specific privileging of material culture. Its objects matter, and what is included, and so excluded, and who can access these archives beco1nes the procedural labour of the archivist. While this labour can take many forms. encompassing preservation, provenance, cataloguing and description, this is merely the material practice that produces the surface and residue of the discursive episteme that founds th e archive and is its necessary substrate.' You don ·t have an archive without this inaugurating labour of its archivists. In addition, there is a lang11age of cultural or docurnentary g11ardianship attached to the archive as a legitimating d i scourse~ and this, in concert with its procedural labour, confers an extenial, other, authority upon these procedures and policies. This is a veritable materialist sociology of self-defining authority that is constructed by the archive as its institutional episteme of rigour. authority. legitimacy. relevance, necessity and value. The application and policing of these specific tcnns is the deep work of lhe archive, regularly played out upon its artefacts as the surface manifestation of otherwise discursive acts, realised through the language of access and integrity.