History is in the details. History is always in the details. They configure history by providing it with a tangible infrastructure and micro-texture. History's paradoxes are also to be found in its details, which can often reveal the presence of contradictory data and 'significant' absences embedded at different thresholds of visibility. These paradoxes and, in particular, the locational/dislocational tension between a 'negative' presence and 'positive' absence gives history its double phantomatic status and allure.
History's perfect model is the photograph and its distributed material culture. Each photograph 'represents' history, its paradoxes and contradictions through its details. Each photograph is also a phantomatic harbinger of different pasts, presents and futures, the more so when they are related together whether by kinship or random association. The spaces between photographs model history's lapses, gaps, and the absence of details, which are its constituent elements along with information. Hence its microfibrous infrastructure which is composed of both empty space and information, both operationally significant, both operationally signifying.