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The article builds on the work of Derrida and Foucault to argue that data curation practices in social science quantitative research data are not merely neutral techniques but are perfomative as in these practices are constitutive of the very data that is being preserved. Therefore, data curation practices are historically and culturally constitutive practices that are based on specific cultural assumptions which constructs the notion of ontological divide between data and context and the assumption that representational practices such as data curation have no effect on the contruction of the material world or the context in which it is understood. The article argues that the approach towards understanding data curation practices should move away from representational lines towards engaging with them as being constitutive of their very objects of study and the knowledge that is produced. Therefore archival practices, in particular data curation ones, produce their own reality and knowledge, as priviliged topologies and by the process of naturalizaing and erasing the fact that these are privileged topologies.