Karl Marx, Lucretius, and the Other Residents of Lisa Robertson’s Archives

Abstract

This paper analyzes the connections between rectos and versos within Lisa Robertson's Fonds at Simon Fraser University. Specifically, it focuses on an early manuscript of the 2010 poetry collection, R's Boat, and the paper it is printed upon. Rather than being printed on its own fresh leaves, it is printed on Karl Marx's dissertation on atomism. Since many of the figures named in this esoteric text also surface in Robertson's collection, these papers enable an intertextual form of reading and a method for reconsidering how the archive serves as a site of reinscription. Following Ann Laura Stoler's method of reading "against the grain," this paper makes legible the sociality of archival materials, and the texts which permeate R's Boat.