eutsch suggestedthat personal memory was untrustworthy and admitted it was no match for the writtenword, and his index enabled him to store information in a way recalling Derrida’sdiscussion of archives as prostheses of memory (Derrida, 1995).

Krapp argues that, despite its ‘respectablelineage’, the card index generally ‘figures only as an anonymous,furtive factor in text generation, acknowledged – all the way into thetwentieth century – merely as a memory crutch’ (361).2 A keyreason for this is due to the fact that the ‘enlightened scholar isexpected to produce innovative thought’ (361); knowledgeproduction, and any prostheses involved in it, ‘became and remaineda private matter’ (361).