Contested Documents: A Neo-Documentalist Approach to Secret Police Files in Post-Communist Romania

Iulian Vamanu

doi:10.29173/cais1147

Abstract

This paper is about a certain type of contested documents (the secret police files known as “informative notes”). It employs a neo-documentalist framework and thematic analysis to examine informative notes on four major intellectuals in communist Romania. The paper focuses on three emerging themes: the power effects that the materiality of informative notes has had, after 1989, on Romanian society; the reasons informers interpreted the writing conventions of this textual genre in radically different ways; and the epistemic aspects of this type of document. I emphasize that, despite their nature as historic documents, secret police files have uncanny relevance for understanding the present-day societies of mass surveillance. Cet article porte sur un certain type de documents contestés (les fichiers de la police secrète appelés «notes informatives»). Il utilise un cadre néo-documentaliste et une analyse thématique pour examiner des notes informatives sur quatre intellectuels majeurs de la Roumanie communiste. Le document se concentre sur trois thèmes émergents: les effets de pouvoir que la matérialité des notes informatives a eu, après 1989, sur la société roumaine; les raisons pour lesquelles les informateurs ont interprété les conventions d'écriture de ce genre textuel de manières radicalement différentes; et les aspects épistémiques de ce type de document. J'insiste sur le fait que, malgré leur nature historique, les fichiers de la police secrète ont une pertinence incroyable pour comprendre les sociétés de surveillance de masse actuelles.

Highlights

This paper is about secret police files as contested documents
A dossier of informative surveillance is a type of complex document comprising other, more basic types of documents, such as informative notes by individuals whose job was to be part of a surveillance assemblage for recording the life events of a “target” individual deemed hostile to the regime
In this study, I focus on the informative note, just one type of contested document which has taken on a new social life during post-communism

Summary

Introduction

This paper is about secret police files as contested documents It raises questions about the challenges of conducting information research of sensitive topics, such as the impact of certain types of documents on people’s identities and moral status in the society. If candidates to public office wrote informative notes before the fall of communism, these documents can be used as blackmailing tools and, can act as genuine “time bomb” devices encouraging corruption and deceit. It is obvious, in this regard, why such documents are contested grounds for citizens, and for whoever intends to study them for scientific purposes

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