Paper and State - Burdens of Proof - page 140

production of documentary evidence. Given their convenience and their
operational deployment in the production of millions of identification
records, the systems developed by the SCEC would eventually constitute a
serious conceptual challenge to those, such as notaries, who sought to
ground the reform of civil law authenticity in cryptographic technologies.
On one level, records of civil status can be read as pure concentrates of
administrative rationality, tersely listing major data points of an individual
life — birth, marriage, adoption, divorce, death:
Birth Certificate, Sabrina, Mona CHAÏBI — On December ninth, nineteen sixty six,
at five hours and thirty minutes pm, was born, at AIN TAYA (Alger), Sabrina, Mona,
female, of Saïd CHAÏBI, born in EL HARRACH (Alger-10th arrondissement), on July
thirteen nineteen forty, a shopkeeper, and of Gisèle, Marie-Thérèse JEAN, born in
LOOMARIAQUER (Morbihan), on April fifth, nineteen forty three, no occupation,
his wife, both residing in ALGER-PLAGE (Alger). 34
The birth certificate serves as the master record, in the margin of which
events modifying the civil status of a French national — such as adoption,
marriage, naturalization, divorce, death, and so on — must be transcribed,
further tracing the life trajectory of the individual: “Married in CARACAS
(Venezuela), June 5th 1993, with Edouard, Christian, Laurent, RUELLOT.”
And finally, “Deceased in BÉZIERS (Hérault), July 4th 2000.”
In this way, although individual records exist for each event (e.g., mar-
riage or death certificate), the birth certificate provides the fullest descrip-
tion of an individual's administrative identity at any moment. This identity
is uniquely defined at the intersection of multiple coordinates — time and
date, birthplace, filiation, profession, residence. For the state, identity is
not an essence, but an intricate web of signs. 35 The document performs
more than a mere listing of data points however, as its creation requires
parties and the public officer to read and confirm their declarations by
affixing their signature. It is the enactment of a ritual “where the public
order is committed, where the officer, the witnesses, and even the parties
fulfill a civic duty which makes them liable to committing forgery.” 36
The documents held by the SCEC were produced under colonial rule
in a broad range of conditions and recorded on media of varied quality,
size, and shapes, from school notebooks to bound registers, microfilms,
electronic text files, and scanned digital images. Although the photocop-
ies I am working from have flattened the material diversity of the originals
into a single contemporary technological form, most of the last hundred