ABSTRACT
The recurrent issue of order and stasis in the archive can be critically investigated through an inquiry into the system of representation of machines and how they mediate our understanding of the archive. Foucault argues that the archive does not work as the sum of all the texts that a culture has kept upon its person as documents attesting to its own past, or as evidence of a continuing identity, including its institutional collections and their discourses of remembrance. The homogeneity of the archive of the past built on a system of cultural capital-infused decisions that led to differentiation from inscription to interpretation to enacted power can be upset by the technical ability of machines. The opening up of museums to account for repressed cultures, objects and discourses has moved forward to consider how such accounts may be still or even further obscured in their new-found representation.
