The Archival Turn in Feminism: Outrage in OrderKateEichhorn. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.

Abstract

Turn in Feminism: Outrage in Order Kate Eichhorn. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2013.The specific focus of Eichhorn's volume is centrality of the archive and practices of archiving in the activism, cultural production, and scholarship of feminists born during and after the rise of the second wave movement with an emphasis on only affect but also order(3). It is the ordering process that enables access not just to the documents, but also, for Eichhorn, the potential for agency in the constraining social context shaped by neo-liberalism (7). In effect, the archive can be used to re-inform the present by de-centering the normative understanding of the past and allowing other interpretations of evidence to develop and emerge, by essentially queering the questions addressed to the archive.The book is comprised of six sections: the introduction, four separate chapters, and the conclusion. While her work incorporates such anticipated theorists as Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Pierre Bourdieu, she also draws on the work of Ann Cvetkovich, Judith Halberstarn, and the scholar/practitioner Jenna Freedman, whom she discusses in depth. concept of an archival turn is adopted from Ann Laura Stoler's work Along the Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (2009). In Chapter One, The 'Scrap Heap' Reconsidered: Selected Archives of Feminist Archiving, the author presents a partial history of archiving, beginning with what she identifies as the decline of the first wave of activism. From her perspective, this context of decline allows the collectors to orient their practice in defiance of the idealization of political progress for feminists. It also pulls the archivist into consideration of the as it matters in the present, which then exceeds a merely preservationist objective in maintaining the resources (31). It enables the possibility of the emergence of archivist as activist.In the next three chapters, Eichhorn presents three case studies of feminist documents and self-published materials as special collections in university libraries across North America (15). Chapter Two, Archival Regeneration: Zine Collections at the Sallie Bingham Center of Duke University, explores the transformation of the audience in the donation by Sarah Dyer of 2050 self-produced zines to a formal academic institution. Her description of the inter-generational proximities which become possible in a archive support her contention that collection itself may advance storytelling that in itself can lead to a reframing of women's history.Chapter Three, Redefining a Movement: Riot Grrrl at Fales Library and Special Collection of New York University continues the exploration of the relationship between the collector, the archive, and the shaping of story. …