ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the archival turn through an examination of institutional case files. It addresses questions about archival sources and their contents. The chapter reinvokes some 'lived-in' categories of historical analysis: gender, class, 'race'/ethnicity, to investigate their political power in reinterpreting both the institution of the historical archive, and the archives of institutions. It seeks to address the problem of 'subaltern' peoples in colonial institutional records, and how historians have sought to access and interpret their lives. The chapter broadly describes the way that historians have engaged with insanity's archive. It self-consciously explores the uses of 'the archive' as a cultural space, with specific reference to the field of insanity's history. The chapter focuses on the challenge to 'locate' colonial pasts through women's and gender history and the histories of Indigenous insane. It ends with a reflection on the archive as a 'contact zone', including thinking about the emotions in the researcher's encounter with archival sources.
