Beyond Community and Representation

Intergenerational Dialogue as Feminist Archival Praxis

Abstract

This article conceptualizes feminist archival praxis through the lens of intergenerational dialogue. Drawing on David Scott’s notion of generational problem-spaces, I argue that this framework offers a politically precise alternative to prevailing paradigms of archival responsibility centred on community or representation alone. Bringing together critical archival studies, feminist theory, and my own experience as an archival practitioner, I propose intergenerational dialogue as a hermeneutic method for apprehending the historically situated and often contradictory ethical horizons that shape archival practice. Reflecting on my work at Rise Up! Feminist Digital Archive, I show how dialogue across generations surfaces tensions over feminist activism and reshapes core archival functions, including appraisal, arrangement and description, and acquisition. Rather than pursuing a more complete representation of the past, this praxis foregrounds the epistemic conditions under which feminist pasts are rendered legible or obscured, thereby destabilizing linear accounts of Western feminism as a coherent or completed political project.