Resumen

PAIARO, Melisa. What Do We Talk About when We Talk About Files? The Relationship Between Physical Space, Collections and Agents. An Ethnographic Work Experience in a “File of Repression”. Rev. Interam. Bibliot [online]. 2018, vol.41, n.3, pp.303-316. ISSN 0120-0976.  https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.rib.v41n3a08.

Based on some questions such as: what is a file?, what do we look for in the archives?, what processes and agents are involved in our access (or not) to them?, throughout this article a series of issues related to working with a particular type of documents produced by a security force and protected in a "archive of repression" (Da Silva Catela, 2002). In this way, we will seek to challenge the idea (or common representation) that conceives the archive, as well as the documents and other assets that comprise it, as given, neutral and static entities. Through the description of a series of situations linked to each other from the account of my own work experience on/ with police documents, I will problematize the notion of file as 'place of dead things'. But also, with that same description, I will seek to demonstrate the immense productivity of the ethnographic perspective to give complexity to the analysis of the world of archives and their collections.

Palabras clave : Archives of repression; collections; police documents; agents involved; ethnographic perspective.

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