The File: Agency, Authority, and Autography in a Pakistan Bureaucracy

Abstract

This article develops an approach to contemporary governance as a communicative practice fundamentally organized by ‘‘graphic artifacts’’—materials such as files, maps, letters, reports,and office manuals. The empirical focus is the role of graphic artifacts in bureaucratic institutions in Islamabad, Pakistan. Departing from functionalist accounts of bureaucracy and from approaches to governmental writing centered on reference and predication, the article describes the use of graphic artifacts, particularly files, in the ritual construction of collective bureaucratic authority and agents. This authority protects individuals and allows particular projects to be collectivized. The article highlights the relationship between, on one hand, the material qualities and dispositions of artifacts and, on the other hand, the semiotic processes they mediate.