ABSTRACT
Reading a 1960s records management textbook against the grain, for purposes that have nothing to do with the efficient filing of paperwork, we come to see bureaucracy’s aesthetic and playful potential. Written originally for the Reanimation Library’s Word Processor series, which finds new creative value in deaccessioned books, this chapter highlights the fanciful furnishings and accessories of clerical work, the spatial and material logics of files, the choreography of administration, and the opportunities for bureaucratic resistance in the intentional loss or destruction of files.
