Fold, Format, Fault: On Reformatting and Loss

This chapter examines how format standardization and cultural practices of reformatting produce conflicting relationships with history, memory, and loss. By addressing examples of reformatting across a number of historical contexts and industries—the folding of books, the microfilming of secret state documents, and the format migrations routinely performed by audiovisual archives—it contemplates the political dimension of formats. Grounding a theory of formats in the study of paper and bookmaking, Jancovic argues that formats need to be understood not as stable and self-evident properties of media objects, but as dynamic practices rife with loss, friction, and incompatibility.