This paper aims at providing a grounding for a theory of documentation. Beginning with Nunberg’s conception of the phenomenon of information (Nunberg 1996), the paper argues for a shift of attention away from the question, What is information?, and towards a critical investigation of the effects of documentary practices. Using a brief sketch of the value of Wittgenstein’s deconstruction of philosophical accounts of meaning (Wittgenstein 1958) for a corresponding deconstruction of philosophical accounts of information, the paper claims that because the informativeness a document depends upon certain kinds of practices with it, and because information emerges as an effect of such practices, documentary practices are ontologically primary to information. The paper then turns to a brief enumeration of some Foucauldian insights (Foucault 1972; Foucault 1979) in order to broaden the theory of documentation to include effects beyond mere informativeness. Analysis of the effects of documentary practices refers us to the properties of such practices. These fall into four broad categories: the materiality of documents; the institutional sites of documentary practices; the ways in which documentary practices are socially disciplined; and the historical contingency of documentary practices. The paper concludes with two examples from early modern science, which show the richness of the factors that must be taken into account to explain how it is that documents produce the informativeness-effect.

Bibliography

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper & Row, Harper Colophon, 1972.
------. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: Random House, Vintage, 1979.
Nunberg, Geoffrey. "Farewell to the Information Age." In The Future of the Book, edited by Geoffrey Nunberg, 103Ð38. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M. Anscombe. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

Bernd Frohmann, Associate Professor
Faculty of Information & Media Studies
University of Western Ontario London, ON N6A 5B7 CANADA
voice: (519) 661-2111 ext. 88510 fax: (519) 661-3506

http://www.fims.uwo.ca/people/faculty/frohmann/index.html