The present article traces the history of multiple private and state archives in Daghestan. Such collections bear imprints of competition between particular individuals and factions. As we shall see, various parties exploited the cultural resources available to them in order to project their subjectivities onto the textual and material evidence. Shifts in cultural values and fashions, together with transformations in language use and an ongoing struggle for personal and communal representation, contributed jointly to the formation of multi-layered discourses on the past. If we are to make sense of our sources, therefore, we must engage with a multitude of competing discourses that have privileged one type of historical view over others, thereby shaping the contours of the body of available material, and rendering information lacunae not just unavoidable, but themselves reflective of past events. Colonialism and coloniality are not alone in having helped configure the power structures that we find manifested in state archives. In fact, much of the competition, marginalization, and careful selection took place even before the transfer of documents to imperial institutions.

中文翻译：

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歧视档案

本文追溯了达吉斯坦多个私人和国家档案馆的历史。这些藏品带有特定个人和派系之间竞争的印记。正如我们将看到的，各方利用他们可用的文化资源，将他们的主观性投射到文本和物质证据上。文化价值观和时尚的转变，加上语言使用的转变以及个人和社区代表性的持续斗争，共同促成了关于过去的多层次话语的形成。因此，如果我们要理解我们的资料来源，我们就必须参与众多相互竞争的话语，这些话语使一种历史观点优先于其他观点，从而塑造可用材料主体的轮廓，并使信息空白不仅不可避免，但它们本身反映了过去的事件。殖民主义和殖民主义并不是唯一帮助构建我们在国家档案中发现的权力结构的人。事实上，许多竞争、边缘化和仔细的选择甚至在文件转移到帝国机构之前就已经发生了。