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we have seen related difficulties in capturing a disease that itself changes over time (leading to large-scale reclassification) using tools that need to capture a body in motion (x-rays, for example), and one that has a profound temporal effect on the biography of the sufferer. The representation of time is a site of tension within most classification systems used in bureaucracies and in science precisely because when things are put into boxes, then a set of atemporal, spatial relationships are producedand duration tends to be folded into the interstices. The inverse problem occurs when things are ordered too much in terms of temporal boxes. Fossil classification (Galtier 1986), for example, is often difficult because it is unclear what is a function of space (a species varying between two sites) as against time (a species evolving). |
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The next chapter takes up another example of the intersection of biography and classification, this time on a mass scale applied to groups of people. In race classification under apartheid in South Africa, a racist classification system was used to divide people into crude racial groups. This practice torqued the biographies of thousands of people, including those caught in between. |
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