An archival feminist pedagogy: unlearning and objects as affective knowledge companions

Abstract

General rightsThis document is made available in accordance with publisher policies. Please cite only the published version using the reference above. Full terms of use are available: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/pure/about/ebr-terms AQ1 AQ2 AQ3 AQ4An archival feminist pedagogy: unlearning and objects as affective knowledge companions AbstractThis paper is based on workshops conducted with students at Bristol University with some of the materials from the Feminist Archive South. We explore how the sensory wonder of the archives enriched and reshaped the practice of feminist pedagogy especially with regard to the interface between ontology and epistemology. We argue that the feminist archive is an important resource which incites us to shift our focus on the process of knowledge production as stories encountered in the archive can challenge the authority and coherence of dominant feminist stories. This can produce feelings of disorientation which act as important moments through which different kinds of feminist knowledge can emerge. Our approach places feelings at the centre of encounters with knowledge because of the mutual entanglement of thinking and feeling rendered salient in the feminist archive. Finally, these processes facilitate different kinds of student-teacher collaboration, with students positioned as co-researchers working to document and interpret the feelings, knowledge and transformations that emerge from the encounter-with the feminist archive. The objects we encountered worked as knowledge companions to stimulate collaborative (un)learning and to produce unique forms of affective knowledge.

Feminism, resistance and the archive

“…And, although accessing the Archive requires effort on the part of researchers, it is now the most used and requested archival resource held by the University of Bristol (personal communication, 2021). Furthermore, the Archive itself has been the subject in recent years of efforts to both disrupt and critically interrogate the structures of knowledge that shape feminisms today -including the conventions of metadata and classification (Withers, 2018;Withers and Fannin, 2019), and with respect to the Archive's pedagogical role within the contemporary university (Perrier and Withers, 2016).…”

Pandemic reflections on the Care and Control exhibition: refusals, contracts and publics

“…Thus, by researching the diverse meanings of self-care and collective care present within the FAS, we aimed to identify a series of care strategies that formed an integral part of the WLM. We were also interested in how encounters in the FAS would challenge the authority and coherence of dominant feminist stories (Perrier and Withers, 2016), such as the idea that transnational feminist ties of solidarity were non-existent in the pre-internet organising era.…”