Sense in Documentary Reference: Documentation, Literature, and the Post-documentary Perspective

Reference in modern documentation is largely governed by theories of evidential representation by documents, as the ‘contents’ of documents. In contrast, newer, what I call ‘post-documentary,’ technologies more emphasize the role of sense in the creation of reference. This paper investigates the implications upon the modernist category of ‘documentation’ and ‘document’ when this shift is taken into account. It also examines the implications upon ‘literature’ as a modernist category that evolved toward contesting modern documentation in the creation of evidence