Archiving feminism: Papers, politics, posterity

Dever, M

Archiving feminism: Papers, politics, posterity

Dever, M

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Publication Type:: Journal Article
Citation:: Archivaria, 2014, (77), pp. 25 - 42
Issue Date:: 2014-01-01

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Field	Value	Language
dc.contributor.author	Dever, M https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1177-8646	en_US
dc.date.issued	2014-01-01	en_US
dc.identifier.citation	Archivaria, 2014, (77), pp. 25 - 42	en_US
dc.identifier.issn	0318-6954	en_US
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10453/118516
dc.description.abstract	This article explores the process of securing for the National Library of Australia Merle Thornton's personal archive, which documents decades of feminist activism. Thornton, a noted figure in Australia's early second-wave women's movement, is best known as one of the "Bar Room Suffragettes," who in 1965 chained themselves to the front bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane, demanding women's right to drink alongside men in public bars. In reflecting on the process of securing these papers, the author poses a series of questions concerning archives and aging, the folding of personal history into collective memory, and the role of archival source material in determining the conditions of possibility for writing histories of feminist activism. Further, in reflecting on her own role in the project, the author asks whether it is possible to perform the work of "archiving feminism" on radically non-nostalgic terms that challenge the discursive positioning of second-wave activists as a generation whose political legacy is threatened by a contemporary "culture of forgetting." Finally, the article necessarily engages with the tension between the archive as a memory device and the archive's entanglement with anticipation and futurity.	en_US
dc.relation.ispartof	Archivaria	en_US
dc.title	Archiving feminism: Papers, politics, posterity	en_US
dc.type	Journal Article
utslib.citation.volume	77	en_US
utslib.for	2103 Historical Studies	en_US
utslib.for	0807 Library and Information Studies	en_US
utslib.for	2102 Curatorial and Related Studies	en_US
pubs.embargo.period	Not known	en_US
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney
pubs.organisational-group	/University of Technology Sydney/DVC (Teaching and Learning)
utslib.copyright.status	closed_access
pubs.issue	77	en_US
pubs.publication-status	Published	en_US

Abstract:

This article explores the process of securing for the National Library of Australia Merle Thornton's personal archive, which documents decades of feminist activism. Thornton, a noted figure in Australia's early second-wave women's movement, is best known as one of the "Bar Room Suffragettes," who in 1965 chained themselves to the front bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane, demanding women's right to drink alongside men in public bars. In reflecting on the process of securing these papers, the author poses a series of questions concerning archives and aging, the folding of personal history into collective memory, and the role of archival source material in determining the conditions of possibility for writing histories of feminist activism. Further, in reflecting on her own role in the project, the author asks whether it is possible to perform the work of "archiving feminism" on radically non-nostalgic terms that challenge the discursive positioning of second-wave activists as a generation whose political legacy is threatened by a contemporary "culture of forgetting." Finally, the article necessarily engages with the tension between the archive as a memory device and the archive's entanglement with anticipation and futurity.

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http://hdl.handle.net/10453/118516