Abstract
This article examines how digital authenticity is constructed through the Portable Document Format (PDF), namely the ways in which format becomes a site where digital memory is fabricated, managed and selectively obscured. By interrogating the visible (marginalia, page skews, residue) and invisible (OCR text files, metadata) features, I show how these paratextual elements contribute to production of authenticity across digital documents. I articulate this process as transversal authenticity, in which authority and legitimacy emerge from the interaction of historical print conventions, digital infrastructures and affordances and sociocultural narratives. Drawing on approaches from media studies, including format studies and media archeology, this article analyzes the technical (scanning techniques, encoding processes) alongside the social (historical narratives, cultural discourse). I argue that transversal authenticity matters, not just in the verification of PDFs but in the determination of cultural and legal ontologies, meanings and affects and in the material and discursive epistemological consequences. This extends to contemporary contexts where formats like the PDF are increasingly used not just in archives, but also as epistemic foundations within computational knowledge infrastructures of LLMs.
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