Preface: The Total Archive | Limn

"This issue of Limn asks authors to consider the way the archive—as a figure for a particular mode of government—might shed light on the contemporary collections, indexes, databases, analytics, and surveillance, and the collectives implied or brought into being by them. At the very least, we have demanded more precision than is found in breathless mainstream media accounts of big data: Is a database an archive? When is an index a database? How is a collection of paper records different when it comes with tiny spot of dried blood on it than when it does not? What differences make a difference when we talk about a seed bank instead of a seed database or a repository of open access documents instead of a pirate library of scanned books? Indeed, are digital collections ‘archives’ at all—do they undermine the existence of archives traditionally conceived? ..."