<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>In this essay I lay out an argument about the scholarship on the emergent rationality of files. Looking at the case of Heinrich Otto Meisner’s groundbreaking modern diplomatics of files and the conditions and possibilities that shaped the argument of his work both practically and politically, I suggest a model for the analysis of bureaucratic mediocracy in historical perspective. I argue for an historical anthropology that acknowledges the epistemic violence and politics of inclusion and exclusion in bureaucracy in order to arrive at an historical anthropology of reason that does not deny, but instead attempts to think through its unequal terms.</p></abstract>

In this essay I lay out an argument about the scholarship on the emergent rationality of files. Looking at the case of Heinrich Otto Meisner’s groundbreaking modern diplomatics of files and the conditions and possibilities that shaped the argument of his work both practically and politically, I suggest a model for the analysis of bureaucratic mediocracy in historical perspective. I argue for an historical anthropology that acknowledges the epistemic violence and politics of inclusion and exclusion in bureaucracy in order to arrive at an historical anthropology of reason that does not deny, but instead attempts to think through its unequal terms.

Revisions and Revisionisms in H.O. Meisner’s Modern Diplomatics of Files: An Essay in the Historical Anthropology of Bureaucratic Mediocracy

Administory

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.

In this essay I lay out an argument about the scholarship on the emergent rationality of files. Looking at the case of Heinrich Otto Meisner’s groundbreaking...

Revisions and Revisionisms in H.O. Meisner’s Modern Diplomatics of Files: An Essay in the Historical Anthropology of Bureaucratic Mediocracy

Article Category: Towards a History of Files

Published Online: Dec 31, 2019

Page range: 87 - 109

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/adhi-2019-0006

© 2020 Mario Wimmer, published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Public License.