Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense

by Ann Laura Stoler

Along the Archival Grain offers a unique methodological and analytic opening to the affective registers of imperial governance and the political content of archival forms. In a series of nuanced mediations on the nature of colonial documents from the nineteenth-century Netherlands Indies, Ann Laura Stoler identifies the social epistemologies that guided perception and practice, revealing the problematic racial ontologies of that confused epistemic space.

Navigating familiar and extraordinary paths through the lettered lives of those who ruled, she seizes on moments when common sense failed and prevailing categories no longer seemed to work. She asks not what colonial agents knew, but what happened when what they thought they knew they found they did not. Rejecting the notion that archival labor be approached as an extractive enterprise, Stoler sets her sights on archival production as a consequential act of governance, as a field of force with violent effect, and not least as a vivid space to do ethnography.

Genres: History, Anthropology, Nonfiction, Library Science, Philosophy, Ethnography, Sociology

314 pages, Paperback

First published November 3, 2008

Reviews

[Michael Chornesky · Rating 3 out of 5]

A fascinating dig into the intricacies, frustrations, and nuances of archival research and a meditation on considering the frame of mind of the sources before using them to reach conclusions. Unfortunately, this book is a slog to get through-- particularly the first two chapters on archival theory-- without a Ph.D. in linguistics.

[Louis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is less about the contents of the Dutch colonial archive and more about providing innovative ways to work with it. In this book, Ann Stoler develops some concepts--"imperial disregard", "historical negatives" and "hierarchies of credibility"--which will provide many scholars with new ways to approach their own studies. As always, the breadth scholarship Stoler draws upon is impressive, as well as the unexpected connections between different academic debates.

[Sam Newton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Has to be among the more over-written books I've ever read, next to William Connolly's, The Ethos of Pluralization. She likes to hear herself write complete nonsensical sentences. Two points I took: 1) the value of archival work at "bringing out" previously concealed truths about others and 2) how historians essentially create visions of people based on the archival data.

[unperspicacious · Rating 2 out of 5]

With reflection, some good points about colonial archival research at the Hague - but rendered almost incomprehensible underneath the mountain of her own academese.

[Alexander Jolley · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author argues that colonial archives, such as the Dutch East India archives, were not merely passive repositories of information; instead, they were technologies of governance that simultaneously reflected and produced the power structures of colonial empires. They treated writing, record keeping, and racial classification as mechanisms for rule. These sources both demonstrated their use as instruments of control, while also revealing anxieties and fragilities that also existed in colonial authority. The author argues that through this lens, archives become both evidence of empire (and all the crimes associated with it) and a demonstration of its ongoing "watermark," which continues to shape our understanding of history into the present day. Furthermore, the author argues that archival practices continually shape understandings of racial identity and statehood. 

The reading treats the Archive as both a source and subject matter. Scholars are encouraged to assess not only what the document says, but also how and why they were created. The "archival turn" draws from other theorists, such as Foucault and Trouillot, who also discuss the interplay of knowledge and power in their writings. The author's inclusion of ethnographic methods invites historians and scholars to approach bureaucratic records as living cultural texts rather than static evidence. A focus on archival and government linguistic conventions, such as "Inlandsche kinderen" (mixed-race children), reveals how official reports and repetitive phrasing can reflect deeper emotional and political tensions.

Stoler suggests that colonial governance was itself sustained through writing itself, not just through violence or economics, which is typically found in postcolonial studies. The control of information, creation of categories, and the concealment of "state secrets" all contributed to an epistemic regime that defined who was considered by governance and who was forgotten. However, within these documents are traces of uncertainty that disrupt the illusion of bureaucratic coherence. The minor histories of mixed-race children illustrate how small instances of documentation expose the moral and administrative tensions underlying colonial power and hierarchies. 

This work situates itself among other postcolonial works and Foucauldian traditions. By emphasizing the emotion, impact, and materiality of record-keeping, archives move beyond purely textual analysis towards a more proper engagement with power. The work's primary contribution lies in the repositioning of the Archive as a tomb of contested meaning, where authority and vulnerability can coexist. Historians must navigate between reading documents as they are and against what they attempt to conceal. It recognizes the Archive not as a neutral mirror of the past, but as a living artifact of memory, negotiation, and power.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like that she challenges too-easy postcolonial readings of archival documents, but her interpretations are both highly relative and not at all straightforward. Worse, her prose is difficult to follow as she writes in abstractions that may help her rhetorical flourish but do little to communicate her meaning to the reader.

[Duncan Prior · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly thought-provoking book. Gripping in places, such as Chapter 6 and the fate of poor old Valck.

By no means finished it. A chapter was included in this week's reading list for my history MA. Ann Laura already has tempted to dig further into the rich stories and even richer text she deploys. I intend to finish this intellectual masterpiece.

Recommended on so many levels.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting take on the Colonial Archive that shows two sides, one that strengthens the nation-state, and another that shows the human side in the form of the lives of those whose documents then made the archive.

[Janice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Diss. Kindred spirit.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A brilliant academic writer, she adores alliteration which can be a bit much. But very good in thinking about the messiness of colonial lives, as treated so well in Duras and Coetzee.

[Andrea Hickman Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still not sure what point this book was trying to make, but it was interesting nonetheless.

[Enas Alsaffadi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Along the grain vs against the grain, how do we read the history, where does the archive falls into the lines?

[Rahul Singh · Rating 5 out of 5]

God, I loved this!

[Abby Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense by Ann Laura Stoler was published in 2009. It might be useful to deconstruct the title of this book to start. The first part of the title "Along the archival grain" refers to the goal of the book. Stoler, a critical and colonial historian, has been studying Dutch colonial archives for numerous years focusing on the Dutch East Indies for this book. The book "is about such a colonial order of things as seen through the record of archival productions" with a specific focus on content and form to understand power relations (Stoler 2009:20). Stoler wants to find "shadowed places" in archives - those places which lie between the states ability to create arbitrary social facts to remain in power - but cautions against a grand narrative of colonial states (ibid. 25). She says archives are a subject pulsating with "repeated incantations, formula, and frames" that change over time (ibid. 36). Stoler believes most colonial historians choose to read colonial archives "against the grain" turning subaltern into heroes and failing to challenge knowledge production as colonial state goals. She chooses instead to read "along the grain is not to follow a frictionless course but to enter a field of force and will to power, to attend to both the sound and sense therein and their rival and reciprocal energies. It calls on us to understand how unintelligibilities are sustained and why empires remain so uneasily invested in them" (ibid. 53). But what are the "Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense" that she talks about in the second-half of the title. Stoler is looking to see how epistemic anxieties stir affective tremors within archives - about anxieties of subject-formation within empire and reinforced by colonial common sense (ibid. 25). Perhaps she finds such epistemic anxieties and colonial common sense expressed in colonial agent Valck's experiences from within the empire. On one hand, Valck was adamant that violence from the local population towards European planters was in retribution for horrible working conditions and even worse treatment. On the other hand, Valck refused to say in his reports there was some kind of organized affair against colonial politics or a result of the Aceh War brewing north. Stoler wants to highlight the sentiment and affect arising that stirs and transforms the common-sense views of colonial authorities.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having finished Along the Archival Grain, I can safely say that my feelings on this book were much less mixed than I expected them to be. Stoler is a clear, engaging writer, and her decision to make the next to last chapter about colonial murders kept my admittedly poor grad student attention span clicking along quite well. I enjoyed reading this book, and there are several people to which I'd recommend it. However, I am not entirely sure that this is a work of history so much as it's a work of theory with a historical example attached. Stoler advocates for a post-modernism critical reading of the archives well, but at times, she does this at the cost of her history of the Dutch colonization of Java. This does not make the book less interesting or more confusing, but it is worth noting that, if you are assigned this book in a history course, you should not expect a traditional work of history.

[Hunter Marston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really climaxed in its Capote-esque Cold Blood murder analysis, but the general archival density and the over-focus on written correspondence loses the argument by the end. "State secrets" mixed with the mundane racial speculations fail to evince a coherent thread.

[Kwan Qi Xiang · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good read and an exciting methodology, though it seems that the possibilities of critical methodology introduced in the intro isn't sufficiently backed up by the actual archival material.