The art of herstory keeping: The Feminist Library’s materialities and organisational practices

This project explores feminist organisational practices and materialities using the case study of the Feminist Library in London. The conditions of possibility and production of feminist organisational space are at the core of this project, considering the precarious nature of the Library. Alongside this, the research examines the changing nature of the feminist space today, particularly in the context of the digital era and in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The role of difference in the production of feminist space is another important point of focus. In order to understand why the Library continues to ‘matter’ (to signify something of substance and value), I explore the experiences of the people who produce it and the different meanings it has for them. The research is based on nine in-depth interviews with workers and volunteers (some of them former), alongside autoethnographic reflections based on my work at the Library, and the organisation’s archival materials. The main conceptual contribution of the project is a (queered) feminist re-conceptualisation of the social production of space as defined by Lefebvre (1991). It acknowledges the importance of change and difference and the multiplicity of perspectives and stories that make the Library what it is, whilst also pointing to the gaps in previous conceptualisations of the social production of space which often exclude marginalised perspectives. The findings of this research should be of interest to scholars within the field of organisation studies, as well as gender/women’s studies. Importantly, as this research is autoethnographic and based on a feminist organisation, it also highlights potential learning and openings for further conversations within the Library community, as well as activist and archival communities more broadly.