Un–Black Boxing the List: Knowledge, Materiality, and Form

This article examines “the list” as a material form, attempting to foreground its integral yet often overlooked role in human communication, administration, and thought. Taking a media materialist approach, the article first presents a brief history of the list that examines certain contexts in which it has been operative. Secondly, it presents a case study from the field of popular music (Bob Mersereau’s Top 100 Canadian Singles) to demonstrate how a contemporary cultural list functions epistemologically. Because the list is a form so resistant to definition, the author focuses on functions—not what a list is, but what it does. Ultimately the article argues that quotidian forms like lists can tell us much about the dynamics at play between human beings and the material circumstances in which they enact thought and action.