Deborah Withers - Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission

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Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission

Feminism, Digital Culture and the Politics of Transmission

Theory, Practice and Cultural Heritage

Deborah Withers

London New York

Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.

Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB

www.rowmaninternational.com

Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA

With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK)

www.rowman.com

Copyright 2015 by Deborah Withers

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN: HB 978-1-78348-350-1

ISBN: PB 978-1-78348-351-8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Withers, Deborah M.

Feminism, digital culture and the politics of transmission : theory, practice and cultural heritage / Deborah Withers.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-78348-350-1 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-78348-351-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-78348-352-5 (electronic) 1. Feminism. 2. Feminism and mass media. 3. Digital media. 4. Feminist theory. I. Title.

HQ1155.W58 2015

305.42dc23 2015022616

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements

T his book was researched and written as I laboured precariously on short-term teaching contracts and time-limited Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) grants. These peculiarly stressful and hyperflexible circumstances have shaped the observations in the book. What follows is informed by a mixture of theory, practice and personal experience, punctuated by long periods of uncertain waiting, which, although profoundly stressful, afforded plenty of time for reading, writing and thinking.

As someone operating outside conventional academic environments, I have had to grasp collegiality and intellectual companionship in nonstandard settings. I am supremely grateful to people who have supported my work, either through sharing ideas, conversations, resources and practices or by commenting on sections of the book and being excited by what they read. It is not easy being a scholar working under these conditions. It requires determination, self-belief and a fair amount of cunning. I would therefore like to dedicate this work to anyone pursuing scholarly activity outside or alongside academic institutions. Your research matters, as do your ideashave courage in your convictions and all power to your struggle.

I am particularly grateful to Adrian Finn from Great Bear Analogue and Digital Media in Bristol, who gave me an opportunity to research, write and learn about the issues relating to the care and preservation of magnetic tape collections and digital artifacts. All of this (ongoing) work is documented on the Great Bear tape blog, http://www.thegreatbear.net/blog/.

Massive thanks must also be extended to Hannah Lowery, my fellow Feminist Archive South trustee and archivist at Special Collections at the University of Bristol, who has always been supportive of my desires to rummage and reconfigure the archives contents, as well as immeasurably kind and insightful about archival matters.

For intellectual companionship, thank you to Victoria Browne, whose thinking has greatly informed this work, and Michelle Bastian, whose facilitation of the Temporal Belongings meetings and network is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Thanks also to Alex Wardrop for your love of words, thinking and learning, which has been a great form of sustenance and inspiration.

Thanks likewise go to my mum and dad, Alexandra Kokoli, Margaretta Jolly, Ellen Malos, Patrick Crogan, Charlotte Cooper, Frankie Green, all at the Glasgow Womens Library, Rachael House, Jo David and all at Space Station Sixty-Five, Maud Perrier, Emma Thatcher, Eva Megias, Jan Martin, Alison Rook, Rosie Lewis and all at Imprint, Rachel Cohen, Gail Chester, Anna Feigenbaum, Andrea Hajek, Susan Croft, Niamh Moore, Sian Norris, Sue Tate, Laura Sterry, Tom Perchard, Annie Gardiner, Josie McLellan, Trishima M. Khan, Hannah Little, Julia Downes, Kate Eichorn, Finn Mackay, Michael ORourke, members of the Fabulous Dirt Sisters, the York Street Band and Siren Theatre Company and participants in the Sistershow Revisited project.

Thanks also to Sarah Maguire for sharing Gertrude Steins 30 minutes a day writing practice, which has been an invaluable disciplinary technique, Sanjay for being a wonderful companion specie and Maggie Nicols for inviting me to live with her at Melin Dolwion as I completed this book. Thanks must also go to Chris Weedon and Glenn Jordan for their work establishing and sustaining the Butetown History & Arts Centre in Cardiff, and all the incredible people who have worked there over the years, and for Chris in particular, who passed this manuscript on to Martina OSullivan at Rowman & Littlefield International. Thank you also, Martina, for taking this project on.

This book is dedicated to the loving memory of Mike, Joan and John Withers and Zouna Benhalla. I still miss you.

Finally, gargantuan gratitude goes to Natalie J. Brown for always being such a super-trouper.

Introduction

I t is the afternoon of Saturday, October 12, 2013, and I am sitting in a caf near Kings Cross St. Pancras Station in London with Jalna Hanmer, a retired professor of womens studies. Jalna was an activist in the Womens Liberation Movement (WLM) and was instrumental in setting up Womens Aid Services in the UK. We are taking a moment to relax after attending the annual meeting of the Feminist Archive, of which we are both trustees. A few hundred yards up the road is the British Library, where a unique event of staged conversations between feminists from different generations is taking place. It is poor timing that our meeting is held on the same day, because we would both liked to have witnessed such collaborative acts of live, public memory-making. It is gratifying, however, that the event, which sold out within hours of its announcement and then moved to a larger venue, is happening. It is testimony to the swelling interest in activist legacies of the UK WLM, which place transgenerational exchanges at the centre of renewed explorations.

In the caf Jalna and I talk about her move to Britain from Oregon, USA, and the stultifying boredom of the 1950s. Then, seemingly out of the blue, she begins to recount a story about her activism in the WLM, meditating upon one incident in particular. In the bustle of the caf it is hard to hear her talk; the background music merges with the deep tone of Jalnas voice. As the story is elaborated, I tune in to it directly because it is one I have never heard before, despite being a keen listener to oral histories from the womens movement, from Brian Harrisons suffrage interviews to my own work interviewing WLM activists. Jalna tells me about an extraordinary meeting held in 1977 that was to decide the fate of Fawcett Librarys collection, which at that time was the largest repository of womens history in the UK. The location of the library, 27 Wilfred Street, SW1, had been put up for sale, and quick action was needed if all the items in the collection were to be kept together. Historian Jill Liddington remembers that the library

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