I also thought about Semiotics of a Kitchen by Martha Rosler so much throughout this essay. Bertillon and Galton's legacy cast a long shadow over us as prospective archivists, and we need to think very carefully about how we operate in the world as archivists, especially in the age of AI.. AI feels like it can reinforce existing social biases and power structures that Galton birthed and this is already happening which scares me- especially because I have to hold myself accountable at making sure I don't let AI control or dominate me as an archivist. The last bit of Ernest Cole resonated with me heavily. As an archivist, we must think about histories and the people whose histories we may be painstakingly collecting that are constantly threatened to become eradicated, erased, and violently displaced. How do we make truth available to people in a way that they are the ones who get to tell their story?

There is something about this passage that makes me think about what happens when every other external marker of the body has been stripped away, almost like a face lift that produces massive invisibility where all other cultural value the person may have once held is gone, and what remains is raw, material value.