VIRTUAL: Prague Heritages

Abstract

The Feminist Library in London was set up in 1975 to support the preservation, dissemination, and discussion of feminist research. Much has changed since then – from more inclusive entry policies to huge expansion of the collections – yet some principles remain the same, such as the approach to the collections as a live reflection and ‘living’ archive of the movement. This paper focuses on and explores the epistemic space of the Library: its collections and in particular, the practices that encourage its co-creation, as a meta-archive of the feminist movement(s) from below. As such, the paper contributes to the study of epistemic spaces, as anti-hegemonic knowledge production sites, from a feminist perspective. As much feminist research in this area shows (see e.g., Eichhorn, 2013; Hildenbrand, 2020), feminist libraries are important sites of alternative knowledge production, in the context of gaps that have historically been produced by the patriarchal hegemony, largely ignoring women, as well as other minoritized subjects. Thus, feminist libraries and archives help address this gap. Yet, they are also more than that, especially in recent years – as both Eichhorn and Hildenbrand show in their research – they are also feminist community spaces and knowledge co-production sites. This paper focuses on the latter aspect of the Feminist Library to explore how knowledge is co-produced in a feminist space, and how this process changes and develops over time, in the wider context of contemporary London, and of contemporary (and past) feminisms. The methodology combines archival research and interview data, with auto-ethnographic reflections. The theoretical approach taken draws insights from queer, feminist phenomenological theory (see e.g., Ahmed, 2006) to develop a critical, reflexive account of the Library as an epistemic space that co-produces knowledge ‘from below’.