Vismann, Files, Ch. 5

The group began with questions...

Then moved to discussion...


How can Vismann's methods and claims about records help us pursue our medical records project?

Method (Genealogy-Archaeology). "The genealogy of the subject from records" (149).  This too is our theme.


Object of Study (Law). "Files become the means for the modern, rationalized exercise of legal power" (127).  Why legal power?  Why state-law?  Is CV's approach in terms of sovereign power?  Can we pursue a biopolitical-disicplinary-infopolitical analysis in parallel?

 
Periodization. One of Vismann's key claims is that there is no significant record-technological (or office-technological) break, or there is technological continuity, between pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany.  She is writing history against the standard periodizations.


Technological conditions.  How do technologies like the office system contribute to the production of the "discursive domain" (146)?  How do we account for technologies producing discourse and subjects?  But without arguing for this in a way that makes it truistically true, such that the genealogy of records or of vertical filing is on a par with the genealogy of toothbrushes or the genealogy of carpet?
   Suggestion.  One idea is that the way to do this is to look at what the technologies do.  The technology of the vertical filing cabinet does ______.  (Toothbrushes don't do that.)
   Reading Vismann in light of the suggestion.  The function of the record is exemplified above all in "the file plan" (142).  This is the bold claim: "File plans give birth to a transcendental order of files prior to all content" (142).   But what is a file plan?