A person dies. The fact is clear, final, and—in administrative terms—significant. It terminates contracts, closes accounts, transfers assets, ends subscriptions, requires notification across a range of organisations that had ongoing relationships with the person who no longer exists.
[Read more]the:: Frame
Fenella Vorpel’s 2003 draft paper on aristocratic archives introduces a term—the Mallard Paradox—to describe a particular quality she observes in the material of noble family records: the tendency of objects and documents to loop between symbol and substance, between surface presentation and hidden content, in ways that shape and obscure the historical narratives they are supposed to preserve.
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