"Confederate Agencies": William Knight, Document Phenomenology and the ‘vibrant materiality’ of the Nineteenth Century Museum Lists at Marischal College, Aberdeen

This paper uses Gorichanaz and Latham’s document phenomenology as a method for understanding early museum documentation, specifically, the collection or museum lists of William Knight of the Marischal College and University of Aberdeen. It seeks to provide an examination of the historical context of the production of these documents, the temporal and social contexts of their interpretation in the contemporary period as archival sources, and to develop scholarly interpretation and discourse regarding museum documentation history, theory and practice. In the museological literature, documents are typically relegated to being containers of data for objects, but this paper demonstrates that documents are instead an exemplary case of what Bennett terms ‘vibrant matter’; they are temporal, contingent, febrile, and evocative.