What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?
Zeitlyn (2012) reviews literature that defines the archive and examines its different roles in maintaining systems of power. The author analyzes works that view the archive as instruments of hegemonic power, as instruments of subversion, as a liminal phase between memory and forgetting, as a form of repression, and as a memory. In particular, it seems that the author critiques some of these works for using exaggerated metaphors to understand archives, and, instead, advocates for alternative considerations such as the archive as orphanages or performance records. The first view sees the archive as being without ownership or a creator; whereas, the second view sees the research process as performative and the archive as “surrogates of the events that created them” (p. 469). In the conclusion, the author suggests scholars move towards creating a “radical archive” that is “rethought and managed in ways unlike anything assumed in previous discussions concerning legal structures, privacy dates, or the models of openness” (p. 474).
What concepts, ideas and examples from this text contribute to the theory and practice of archive ethnography?
In the piece, I liked how the author combines the concepts of both Stoler (2009) and Trouillot (1995) by encouraging scholars to read along the grain and across it. Citing Trouillot (1995, p. 29), Zeitlyn argues that such an approach helps us “think about the power plays affecting silences, determining which stories get told and which leave traces.” Referring to the work of Guha (1983), Zeitlyn claims we can focus on understanding both “how records were created (reading along the grain) to recover history from below (reading across the grain)” (p. 465). Though I am a bit unsure of what it means to read along and across the grain, I think this approach is a helpful reflective practice that can be used in archive ethnography to reexamine how the creation and curation processes of archives affect the stories they tell and, importantly, who gets to “speak.”