Editors' Introduction

As Alice Gambrell notes in her erudite “Author’s Statement,” Stolen Time is at once an archive and an argument, as it offers a powerful argument about the archive and exposes archival logics as always inherently ideological. Importantly, the piece enacts its argument, requiring its user to explore this virtual archive in order to access the argument constructed there via the user’s own navigations. The argument is emergent, unfolding as the user becomes more and more immersed in the piece itself. It stands as a provocative and playful example of experiential argument, pushing scholarly practices such as research, annotation, and citation in lively new directions.
This archive also encapsulates and preserves a history of labor practices, limning both the oppressive and the expressive potentials encapsulated in a variety of office work and office machines. As such, it offers evidence to the creativity of all manner of text workers. Such histories are vitally important in a moment such as our own when the forces of globalization seem to encourage our seamless incorporation into capital and the networks through which it flows. Stolen Time reminds us of resistance.


Editors' Introduction Continued