Archive Ethnography: What is the main argument, narrative, or e/affect?

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).