Digging in your own backyard

This article assumes the archive is at once a repository of facts as it also is laden with, and implicated in, historically and geographically constituted webs of power relations. The archive can be a benign repository, a powerful interpretive apparatus, an epistemological frame on the world, and often is all of these at once. But understanding the theoretical implications of a problematized "archive" and knowing what that means "on the ground" - in particular cases and sites and empirical examples - are not always the same thing. In order to help rectify that sometimes-disjuncture between theory and practice, this essay presents a story of a racialized landscape that begins with one foray into an historical archive in a very traditional sense - a local repository of government documents. It suggests that the issues and problems explored in this particular case transcend their site, with broader scholarly relevance for a wider audience.