1951: On Bet and the Privilege of the Label
In 1951, during a routine inspection of the Mallard archive, Bet deMallard discovered three unattached labels:
- Return to Original Sequence
- Contents Removed Prior to Review
- See Previous Label
No corresponding boxes were located. Miss deMallard subsequently created entries for all three in the catalogue. Their present whereabouts remain unknown. And naturally the catalogue entry survives. The labels do not. Which delights Bet enormously: she has always suspected that paper outlasts paper, that the index is more durable than the thing indexed, that the record of an error is more stable than the error itself.
Bet deMallard is not a person. Her payroll records remain incomplete. No evidence of her employment has survived. Three memoranda refer to her by name, and the Viscountess denied her existence repeatedly. The denials appear in what may be Bet’s hand or typewritten file — a distinction that is perhaps less significant than it sounds, since the archive does not in practice distinguish between handwriting and the authority of the typewriter once the margin has been filed. If Bet is a fiction, she is a fiction that files, and that is not a fiction one can easily evict.
She catalogues the labels. That is her work. She is not often thanked for it. Arthur Blandy, who once wrote a paper on the “administrative uncanny” and then buried it in a drawer marked “temporary,” has never publicly acknowledged her long working hours. He prefers to say that the archive arranges itself, which is a polite way of saying that he does not know who arranges it. He will tell you that a servant existed, that a ghost existed, that a psychic existed, that a letter existed, that a box existed, that a label existed — and then he will tell you that none of them existed, that they were all gestures, that they were all inventions, that they were all necessary because they were not real. Arthur is a man of narrative. Bet is a woman of precision.
Arthur invents people. Bet invents nothing. She invents entries. She invents relations. She invents the possibility that the label is not the thing. Vorpel believes that Arthur invented Bet. She is wrong. Bet is not invented. She is catalogued. She is not a person. She is the archive’s way of saying that the label matters more than the thing.
The Mallard archive is a system of exact references pointing towards an indeterminate landscape. It is not a warehouse. It is not a library. It is a climate of relations. It is a place where the label is the thing. The three labels inside Box 12B are perfect Mallard objects. They are precise. They are open. They are instructions without objects. They are directions without destinations. They are promises without nouns.
In most archives, the content is primary. The file is the object. The label is its servant. Archival practice teaches that labels identify, describe, and locate; that they are practical tools, not ends in themselves. The stability of the system depends on the assumption that the label and the thing it names are bound together, that the label is a faithful index of the thing. Bet knows this. She also knows the quiet truth that the archive does not permit to exist in daylight: that the label is more durable than the thing it names. The box vanishes. The carton is renumbered. The file is removed prior to review. The label remains, detached, orphaned, alive.
That is why the discovery inside Box 12B is so beguiling. Three labels without boxes. Three instructions without an object to obey. They are perfect because they are useless. They are precise because they are meaningless. Each is a direction without a destination. Each is a promise without a noun. Each is a fragment of administrative language that has survived its referent.
Bet has not always been kind to the archive. She has probably already introduced errors into both the archive and the catalogue. She has probably misfiled a box, probably misnumbered a label, probably misdated a transfer note. She has probably written an entry that does not correspond to a box. She has probably written an entry that corresponds to a box that no longer exists. She has probably written an entry that corresponds to a label that no longer exists. She has probably written an entry that corresponds to nothing at all.
That is not negligence. That is the archive’s way of saying that the label matters more than the thing.
Arthur is a man of narrative. Bet is a woman of precision. Arthur invents people. Bet invents nothing. She invents entries. She invents relations. She invents the possibility that the label is not the thing. Vorpel believes that Arthur invented Bet. She is wrong. Bet is not invented. She is catalogued. She is not a person. She is the archive’s way of saying that the label matters more than the thing.
The catalogue entry survives. The labels do not. This is the point. The entry is the thing. The label is the ghost. The entry is the thing that remains. The label is the thing that goes. Bet delights in this. She knows that the entry is the thing that will be read. She knows that the label is the thing that will be forgotten. She knows that the entry is the thing that will be preserved. She knows that the label is the thing that will be lost.
She knows that the label is the thing that is important. And she knows that the entry is the thing that survives.
The Viscountess Viola Vorpel is unaware of the existence of Bet. She is not mentioned on the payroll. She is not a person. She is a method. She is a catalogue. She is the archive’s way of saying that the label matters more than the thing. Vorpel posits that Bet is a creation of Arthur Blandy. She posits that Bet is a rhetorical device. She posits that Bet is an invention. She is wrong. Bet is not invented. She is catalogued. She is not a person. She is the archive’s way of saying that the label matters more than the thing.
The labels do not identify. They imply. The labels do not survive. They are destroyed. The labels do not matter. They are the thing. Bet deMallard knows this. She delights in it. She catalogues it. She survives it. And the catalogue entry survives. The labels do not. Which delights Bet enormously.
Sources
A Comprehensive and Exhaustively Annotated Report on the Correlation Between Unpaid, Unrecorded, and Possibly Imaginary Personnel in the Departmental Payroll Registers of the Mallard Archive and the Corresponding, Discrepant, Duplicate, and Frequently Erroneous Entries in the Catalogue of Detached Labels, Including a Full Chronological Index of All Memoranda, Transfer Notes, Box-Lid Annotations, and Typewritten Denials That Reference the Name “Bet deMallard,” Together with a Critical Examination of the Administrative Uncanny, the Peculiar Persistence of Catalogue Entries Over Their Corresponding Physical Objects, and the Hypothesis That the Catalogue Itself May Have Been Composed, Edited, or in Part Fabricated by a Non-Existent, Non-Paid, or Speculatively Invented Archivist Operating Outside the Bounds of Official Employment, Contractual Obligation, or Payroll Verification, With Supplementary Appendices on the Nature of Detached Labels, the Ontology of Unlocated Boxes, and the Ethical Implications of Cataloguing Absence as If It Were Presence by Bet deMallard
On the Existence of Bet: A Preliminary Demonstration, AF Blandy
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