‘Mutating Records’—Bureaucratic Knowledge in the Realm of Splintering Digitality

Abstract

The digitalisation of the state in India and elsewhere has produced a range of effects and critical responses. Arguably, digital processes intervene in the functioning of paper processes, the lynchpin of bureaucratic states with a colonial legacy. Digitalisation must be understood as the emergence of data and technologies splintered across many different locations and functions of the state rather than as a singular form. This article argues that this splintering digitality generates a perspectival stance on the (re)significance of paper by agents of the state that embody its ‘textual habitus’, namely Village Accountants (VAs). Memorialised as writers, VAs have historically been responsible for recording the ever-changing social. Faced with the computerisation of records and their removal from participation in key inscriptional events, they generate a critique of writing and point to non-textual forms of information that congeal outside written records. In doing so, they provide a view into the encounter between digitalisation and bureaucratic knowledge.