![]() Farge wants us to feel and appreciate the entire ecology of the archives, with their binders, ticking clocks, polished tables, solemn archivists, and the reassuring, or annoying, physical presence of other researchers. Indeed, as Arlette Farge explains, judicial records are often found encrusted in a "uniform layer of stiff dust that cannot be blown or brushed off, a scaly hide hardened by the years." Untying such a bundle of records leaves a pale stripe where the ribbon was tied. There is a sprinkling of dust in this volume, to be sure, over the length of its elegant, delicately beautiful writing. AN INTRODUCTION TO RESEARCH in the archives sounds like something lugubrious, a tour through silent rooms in which benumbed readers sit with eyes half-closed, choking quietly on drifting clouds of powdery dust. ![]()
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