where remembering and forgetting intersect with the promises of “every (wo)man her own historian” held out by the internet.
work in progress
This project traces a woman named Bonnie Johnson who came to stand for the countless women who live on in the footnotes of the “academic colony,” while their authors remain sister/outsiders. Although Bonnie Johnson, I eventually learn, held an MA in women’s history from Sarah Lawrence College, her contribution to feminist thought and history is largely relegated to one pivotal publication, Black Women on Black Women Writers.
As Gloria T. Hull said, black feminists live "on that line between the either/or and both/and" the very metaphor invoked by Johnson along with her co-author Camille Bristow in “Both And” given at the 1979 conference, The Second Sex Thirty Years Later, an event best known as the occasion for Audre Lorde speech that became The Master's Tools. Leaving behind, or rather looking behind this well known work, I trace Johnson using the digital means made possible by the internet-as-archive.
In the process now of over 6 months of tracing Bonnie Johnson, I’ve come to understand this project, which I describe as an “unghosting” of an “apparition”, in several ways. The first concerns the politics of digitization, access, and archival silences, while the other concerns the dynamics of histories, specifically the politics of exclusion, or where remembering and forgetting intersect with the promises of “every (wo)man her own historian” held out by the internet.
roll over nodes to reveal titles
comments read best in "pop out" mode
Although the project is nonlinear, the titles and images are numbered to provide one sequence
if you prefer a page sequence, click "radial" tab (above left)
follow green links between pages or hover over to read
blue links go to external sources
open book page images in separate frame to explore context for quotations
As Gloria T. Hull said, black feminists live "on that line between the either/or and both/and" the very metaphor invoked by Johnson along with her co-author Camille Bristow in “Both And” given at the 1979 conference, The Second Sex Thirty Years Later, an event best known as the occasion for Audre Lorde speech that became The Master's Tools. Leaving behind, or rather looking behind this well known work, I trace Johnson using the digital means made possible by the internet-as-archive.
In the process now of over 6 months of tracing Bonnie Johnson, I’ve come to understand this project, which I describe as an “unghosting” of an “apparition”, in several ways. The first concerns the politics of digitization, access, and archival silences, while the other concerns the dynamics of histories, specifically the politics of exclusion, or where remembering and forgetting intersect with the promises of “every (wo)man her own historian” held out by the internet.
In large part my thinking has been influenced by Clare Hemmings recent work Why Stories Matter, which analyzes the narratives of feminism over the past three decades. Hemmings argues that feminist scholarship itself has erased that which it claims to value most, the voices of the marginal. Although Hemmings focuses on gender and cultural studies, I found her methodology and conclusions quite provocative when applied to history. How, I wondered, could I avoid perpetuating these erasures, or ghostings as I came to think of them?
Discussion of "where remembering and forgetting intersect with the promises of “every (wo)man her own historian” held out by the internet."
Add your voice to this discussion.
Checking your signed in status ...