ABSTRACT
Evidence is what makes the archive political, from the moment of preservation (or not) to the display of proof (or lack thereof). Archival evidence originates from and perpetuates the white supremacy, class hierarchy, homophobia, misogyny, and other forms of oppression structurally encoded in the archive. This chapter recounts the salient methodological debates during and since the “archival turn” before turning to a series of related developments, loosely grouped under the heading of speculative methods, which tackle the political problem of evidence by bringing in the methods of fiction.
In this, speculative methods are often positioned in opposition to the traditional archive, a positioning that, the chapter claims, ultimately restricts the efficacy of the speculative project. To begin unraveling that historical opposition, the final section briefly examines the mutual influences of the historical novel and the burgeoning archival standards of the nineteenth century in order to demonstrate the role that fiction has always played in the formation of archives. What emerges are both the political stakes of archival evidence and the futures that may be found in the archive’s past.
