In mathematics, i marks a position within order—a discrete index used to locate, count, and totalise difference. In a colonial context, this logic became a tool of power: each i transformed into a racial type, each xᵢ a quantified body.
To index was to translate life into data, to render the ungovernable legible to empire. Benedict Anderson’s “Census” from Imagined Communities (1983) describes how colonial administrations used enumeration to imagine a knowable population. Through the act of counting, they created both the illusion of completeness and the authority to define what could be counted.
My response takes the form of a detailed, critical Inventory—a document of administrative creation that simultaneously defines and critiques the structure of colonial knowledge. I adopted the persona of a colonial administrator, mimicking the mathematical and legalistic precision seen in the “Identity Index” image, but subverting it to expose the system’s foundational fiction.
Bibliography:
Anderson, Benedict., 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Verso, London, UNITED KINGDOM.
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