Decomposed, Not Abolished: The Archon of a Rule-Based Archive

Abstract

In one influential philosophical account of the archive, there is no archive without an archon — a guardian who keeps, interprets, and excludes — and no archive without an outside, a place of consignation distinct from what it holds. This article reads that account against a rule-based art system running since 1 January 1993, in which each calendar day constitutes one work whose Authentic Number and price are fixed by formula, inscribed in the physical work, and computable by anyone. The case does not abolish archontic authority; it decomposes it — and it shows archival exteriority in portable form. The discretion the rule removes is the nomological one — the power to say under what law a thing enters the record and by what sign it stands there: the series is complete before anyone chooses, so no day is let in or kept out, and each sheet carries the instruction in place of a guardian's decision. What the formula does not establish — authentication, uniqueness, the register — rests with the named authors and the collector; every numerical assignment remains computable from the calendar. Foundation decisions are named and dated rather than concealed. Four axes organize the comparison — arkhē as commencement and commandment, the archon, the outside, and futurity — each anchored to a specific passage of Derrida's Archive Fever: on arkhē the rule follows his account, on futurity in one sense only, and on the remaining two — the archon and the outside — it takes his account apart. The four do not divide evenly, and are not forced to. What the case offers is a documented limit case — an archive whose governing law is arithmetic, public, and printed on every item — against which those conditions can be tested one at a time. The claim is structural, checkable, and limited to a single case. Preprint of a manuscript submitted to the Journal of Critical Library and Information Studies. An earlier version of this preprint corresponded to a manuscript submitted to Archival Science, which was not accepted; a first revision added anchors to the professional archival literature and converted the apparatus to Chicago 17; this version follows a second external review, arguing the decomposition of the archon's nomological function, naming and dating the foundation decisions, and sourcing the unit of account. This version now also includes two figures: an unused pre-printed sheet and the foot of a realized sheet. The photograph of the realized sheet was taken by, and is reproduced by permission of, its present owner, and is excluded from the CC BY licence of this preprint.