Beyond ‘Reading’ Materials: Trace (on Trace) and Value

In the early 20th century, British colonial government representatives introduced a new tariff schedule in British-South Africa. At the docksides of British-South African ports, colonial customs officials were subsequently tasked with sorting the commodities they encountered into the orderly classifications that the tariff schedules prescribed.1 Custom House records vividly illustrate the contentious negotiations and ensuing, low-level disputes between customs officials and importers regarding a commodity that had remained unclassified and untaxed until recently: imported second-hand clothing. Since duties levied on second-hand clothing were set significantly higher than duties levied on new clothing, cases of fraudulent entries of the former rose significantly, causing customs officials to break open imported bales and examine the clothing articles therein. Clothing tags and tickets – reading, for instance, “‘Made in Holland’ [or] ‘Paris Nouveau’” – could serve as indicators of country of origin and/or manufacture.2 Furthermore, looking for “distinct traces of wear”, customs officials checked clothing pockets for “fragments” (i.e., tobacco, paper clippings, crumbs, see fig. 1). Following the button linings of a coat, they checked the fabric for holes and loose threads or examined the armpits of outerwear. If a jacket had been worn regularly, customs officials reckoned, the colour of the fabric would have faded in places where layers of textiles had repeatedly rubbed against one another.3
In the past two decades, theoretical discussions of concepts and notions of trace(s) have increased significantly. Drawing on theoretical approaches by, inter alia, Jacques Derrida and Carlo Ginzburg, traces are conceptualised as, e.g. “material manifestation[s] […] of something” or contemporary phenomena recognized as references to past phenomena.4 More recently, scholarly attention within some fields of the humanities has turned to what is often referred to as ‘traces of use’.5 The recognition and subsequent classification of clothing as second-hand at the British-South African docksides was as much tied to the materiality of the clothing article in question as to the customs officers’ “bridging theories and background knowledge.”6 Observable deviations from the expected (a hole next to a sewed-on button) were not only recognized as such but linked to specific causes (the clothing article had been worn and re-buttoned).
The ensuing early-20th century disputes between customs officials and importers over the causational links drawn by the latter, however, point to broader theoretical-methodological issues faced by historians: How do we link the messiness of the objects we encounter to a past we aim to access and reconstruct?
Snot and Stain – Trace on Trace and Value Regimes
“The rich man puts it in his pocket and the poor man throws it away. What is it? […] Snot”, is the answer to Michael Thompson’s opening riddle in his Rubbish Theory. Thompson’s primary point of interest – and the point of the riddle’s amusement – is the irony that while snot is commonly ‘valued’ negatively within society, the act of its disposal on to the ground is socially more frowned upon than its disposal on to a handkerchief. Things, Thompson proposes, fall into one of three categories of possessable objects: valuable, valueless, and negatively valued. However, these states are transitory as objects may move in and out of the categories across time based on the “social control of value” that determines whether objects are transient (decreasing in value), durable (increasing in value), or rubbish, i.e., objects of zero value.7 Setting aside Thompon’s aim to formulate a social theory with rubbish as the access point, his approach to theorize the relation between object and value remains intriguing, mirrored not least by a growing interest in economic sociology to analyse “value systems” and “value regimes”, i.e., the structural conditions that govern the production, appropriation, distribution, and evaluation of value in particular contexts that, in turn, define the worth of things.8
In the context of this essay, the main protagonist in Thompson’s riddle, however, is neither handkerchief nor ground, rich or poor person, but the snot. Left on the ground, it may well evaporate over time, while the handkerchief will likely be washed. For a brief period, however, the snot will remain visible, observable, a wet stain on either surface, a trace on a trace. Much like the customs officials who ‘read’ the fabrics before them, I propose to follow the stain,9 the loose thread, the hole, and to allow ourselves to be irritated by deviations from the expected, not unlike the customs officials at the docksides and their attentiveness to and careful examination of the fabrics before them. However, the historian’s work should include critical reflection of the theories and knowledge that guide the causational links we draw, including careful consideration of the very absence of deviation or irritation.
Absent Irritations: Memory Things Without Trace(s)
Attentiveness to material evidence – construed here as attentiveness to objects with intended uses fabricated by humans – commonly (while not exclusively) guides the historian’s gaze to collections held by institutions and private individuals whose intentions to collect and preserve have already marked the objects as traces of the past.10 Objects that do memory work, i.e., things on display in museums, in private collections, that have been endowed and passed on for generations are ascribed meaning and embedded in narratives that they – more often than not – underline. For example, there is an officer’s full-dress tunic held by the National Army Museum (NAM) in London. In Thompson’s terminology, the tunic is a valuable, durable object, a memory object that represents and narrates a specific imperial history of warfare.11 The observer will note two peculiarities: First, NAM staff discovered that the buttons and original facings on the tunic are from another infantry with whom the tunic’s wearer had not served, leading the staff to assume that the wearer had purchased the tunic second-hand when he joined the regiment. Second, it is the very absence of traces on the tunic that irritates. One is left to wonder if and why restorative practices have cleansed the tunic of stains, repaired holes, cut loose threads? Or had the tunic been collected and preserved precisely because of the lack of traces? Finally, why were the false buttons preserved?
This tunic, on one hand, appears to be in a different value regime than the second-hand (military) clothing articles the customs officials combed through at the British-South African docksides governed, not least, by the intended (re)uses of the clothing article in question and embedded in systems of valuation that were as much based on materiality as they have (not) effected it. The tunic held by the NAM – and by taking into consideration the information provided by the museum staff members – calls for questions related to practices of restoration and preservation and the display of ‘flawless’ or ‘undamaged’ objects – questions that are certainly related to this essay but will remain underexplored in this context. On the other hand, while the NAM tunic and the imported clothing articles point to different contexts of military clothing reuse, they point to equally relevant (and related) facets within the trade of military clothing: The Custom House records offer insights into processes of commoditisation in an increasingly globalised second-hand clothing trade, while the false buttons on the tunic held by the NAM provides indication of military clothing reuse within armies. Yet, in both cases, it is not the object or written records about the object but the observable and described traces on the object that enrich histories of (military) clothing reuse.
Conclusion: Irritating Absences
Both presence and absence of traces on traces have historically informed processes of (re)valuation and, thus, the construction of economic value. Approaches within economic sociology have yet to consider the materiality of objects in relation to processes of valuation – and vice versa. The latter precede – if we keep thinking in Thompson’s categories – the movement of objects between transient and durable states and may lead objects to move in-between altogether different value regimes.
With a few important exceptions, historians too have barely begun to address the potentials of analysing traces on traces, nor the potential pitfalls and boundaries of doing so. Detlef Hoffmann provides the insightful example of an oil painting, discovered during the renovation of a city archive in 1960. It had been detached from a frame, tightly rolled, and hidden in a cavity half a meter underground in the final days of the Second World War. Traces of breakage running through the painted canvas had not been restored, allowing observers to be irritated by “a ruin”12 on display that encourages different questions, and lets the painting “‘[…] speak back’” differently.13
The absence of traces on a trace should, however, not irritate any less, particularly with memory things at work. Preservation has been preceded by processes of valuation and, at times, practices of restoration and renovation. As historians, we may well ‘read’ objects along the grain, allowing the objects to enrich the narratives of a past we aim to reconstruct. A critical approach, however, requires readings along as well as against the grain.14 After all, what is missing or has been left out, erased or not preserved provides additional – and otherwise untraceable – linkages between past, present and future. If there is nothing or no trace (on a trace) to observe, the silence is something (or the trace) to question.
This essay is based on a paper presented at the workshop Trace on Trace. Inter- and Transdisciplinary Perspectives, convened by the focus area Materiality between Past and Future at the Center for Theories in Historical Research, Bielefeld University, in November 2024. The workshop brought together researchers in history, philosophy, theatre and cultural studies to revisit, explore, and challenge the potential and boundaries of concepts of trace in relation to traces on objects. I thank the participants of the workshop and the reviewers of this essay for their engaging questions and constructive feedback.
Agnes Piekacz (apiekacz@uni-bielefeld.de) is a postdoctoral researcher in history. Her research interests include the global circulation of goods, infrastructures of cross-border money transfers, and theories and methods in history through interdisciplinary lenses. In 2024, her dissertation on the emergence of a global market for second-hand (military) clothing in the late 19th century was awarded the Dissertation Prize of the German Historical Institute London. She is currently a junior fellow in the Interdisciplinary Fellow Group 12 “Cash in Crisis Times: A West African Investigation” at the Merian Institute for Advanced Studies in Africa (MIASA, Accra).


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- Regarding the “taxonomic sway” of tariff schedules see Isabel Hofmeyr, Dockside Reading: Hydrocolonialism and the Custom House. Durban/London: Duke University Press, 2022, 42. [↩]
- National Archives of South Africa, Cape Town Archives Repository, T vol. 971, no. 771/1906. [↩]
- National Archives of South Africa, Cape Town Archives Repository, T vol. 1134, no. 3858/1908 and see ibid., DCU vol. 75, no. 638/1906. [↩]
- Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, “Infra-experimentality: From Traces to Data, from Data to Patternning Facts,” History of Science 29, no. 3 (2011), 337-348, here 338. See Bruce Routledge, “An Archaeology of Traces,” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 34, no. 2 (2024), 339-352; Sybille Krämer, Werner Kogge and Gernot Grube (eds.), Spur. Spurenlesen als Orientierungstechnik und Wissenskunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2007. [↩]
- Anke Jaspers and Andreas B. Kilcher (eds.), Randkulturen. Lese- und Gebrauchsspuren in Autorenbibliotheken des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts. Göttingen: Wallstein Verlag, 2020. [↩]
- Routledge, “Archaeology of Traces,” 345. [↩]
- Michael Thompson, Rubbish Theory. The Creation and Destruction of Value. 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press, [1979] 2017, 19-27, here 19. [↩]
- Arjun Appadurai, “Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,” in The Social Life of Things, Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 3-63; Jens Beckert and Patrik Aspers (eds.), The Worth of Goods. Valuation and Pricing in the Economy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011; Nicky Gregson, The Waste of the World. Consumption, Economies and the Making of the Global Waste Problem. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2023. [↩]
- Lisa Regazzoni, “Die Vergangenheiten auf der Spur: Abriss einer Theorie der Intentionalität – Den Dingen entlang,” Geschichtstheorie am Werk (26.04.2022), DOI: https://doi.org/10.58079/pcxa (19.05.2025). [↩]
- Adrian Currie, Rock, Bone, Ruin. An Optimist’s Guide to the Historical Sciences. Cambridge/London: The MIT Press, 2018, 89-90. On intentionality see Lisa Regazzoni, “The Uncertain Stuff of History: Outline of a Theory of Intentionality – Thing by Thing,” History and Theory 63, no. 2 (2024), 186-218. [↩]
- National Army Museum London, NAM. 1974-09-72-1, URL: https://collection.nam.ac.uk/detail.php?acc=1974-09-72-1 (16.04.2025). [↩]
- Detlef Hoffmann, “Zeitgeschichte aus Spuren ermittlen. Ein Plädoyer für ein Denken vom Objekt aus,” in Zeithistorische Forschungen/Studies in Contemporary History 4 (2007), 200-210, here 204. [↩]
- Mieke Bal, Travelling Concepts in the Humanities. A Rough Guide. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 2002, 45. [↩]
- Ann Stoler, Along the Archival Grain. Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009. [↩]
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Agnes Piekacz (June 10, 2025). Beyond ‘Reading’ Materials: Trace (on Trace) and Value. Geschichtstheorie am Werk. Retrieved November 16, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/142v1

