The politics of the liberal archive

The idea of considering the archive as a political technology of liberal go vernmentality is developed in this article, questions of the uses of archiv es (important as these are) taking second place here to the politics appare nt in the design and idea of one particular form of the archive. This form is the public archive as it became apparent in the 19th-century institution of the public library, the two chief examples being in Manchester and at t he British Museum in London. The public archive can be seen to constitute a liberal public which was itself increasingly a democratic one. This consti tution turned upon ideas such as the 'free library', 'self-help' and the ac tive constitution of new readings of social life and social conditions. The se readings involved the management of class relations at the time, and par allels are drawn between a sort of 'anthropologizing' of the archive eviden t in India and its 'sociologizing' in Britain at the same time. The constit ution of democratic, liberal citizenship through the archive also turned up on particular readings of the centre-locality relationship and upon notions of urban community. Library catalogues are considered, and the design of l ibraries, so that the importance of spatial dimensions of the archive is ev ident.