Political anthropology

Final Exam in Political Anthropology

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An Analysis of Ann Laura Stoler 's Along the Archival Grain

Ann Laura Stoler (2008 , in her book , Along the Archival Grain , argues that archives ought to be perceived as subjects of knowledge as opposed to sources of knowledge . Such a claim is based on her assumption that the placement and form of archives are affected by cultural agents of `truth ' production and as such

are prone to the epistemological framework of those who have enabled their production and rearrangement throughout history . As the subtitle of her book suggests , Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Commonsense , archival information ought to be seen as subject to critical analysis since the truth content of these materials are subject to the contrasting claims within the archival materials themselves which stems as a result of the uncensored turns of phrase , loud asides in the imperative tense , hesitant sotto voce ' of the colonized people (Stoler : 23 . In to prove her claim regarding the problematic aspects in relation to the credibility of archival materials along with its relation to the epistemological foundations used in the production of these materials , Stoler uses the example of the Dutch colonial archives . In line with this , what follows is an analysis of Ann Laura Stoler 's aforementioned claims as it is presented in her book Along the Archival Grain

The founding principle of anthropology has been...