De rerum natura: Origins and uses of the biologicals metaphors in classic archive theory

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the origins of the biological metaphor in the Archive theory. Firstly, the organic rhetoric will be examined as an intellectual method useful to explain the Social contract in Thomas Hobbes, Herbert Spencer and Jean-Jacques Rousseu. A Michel Foucault´s approach is a key element to support the union between the nineteenth-century positivist biological theory and discourse of power. Subsequently, of we will proceed to examine the impact of this biopolitical metaphor in the classic postulates of Archival theory: the Dutch Manual, Hilary Jenkinson and Theodore Schellenber´s life cycle theory.