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Renate Klein and Susan Hawthorne on the demise of feminist publishing
WHEN we set up the independent feminist publishing house Spinifex Press 15 years ago, we had no idea of the challenges we would face.
In the early to mid-1990s we had some real advantages, one of which was our international network. In 1984 Renate was one of 40 women at the first International Feminist Book Fair that was held in London. Subsequently, every two years it was held in another city: Oslo, Montreal, Barcelona, Amsterdam and, in 1994, Melbourne. These book fairs created friendships as well as translations, co- productions and other publishing deals.
At Barcelona in 1990 we discussed the possibility of co- producing English-language books across the world. This was a visionary idea when global marketing was just beginning. There is a sad irony in this because within five years the non-feminist global economy would ensure that feminist publishing houses and bookstores would fall, like a deck of cards, across the Western world.
The international network was bolstered by a thriving feminist publishing industry in the US, Canada and Britain. Remember the Women's Press, with its iron and striped spines; remember Virago? The Women's Press no longer exists except in name, while Virago has disappeared under the too-big umbrella of Time Warner.
Many factors contributed to the demise of feminist publishing. The first was postmodern prevarication, a confusion of positionality that meant the word feminist fell into disrepute and gender was in ascent. What political opposition could not do, postmodernism did. It created a generation of students who read books by people who were not keen on communication or on social change. Many of the ideas espoused by postmodernists had been...