Feminism in Bookshops - not really helping!

[LRDTheFeministDragon]

Following on from suwoo's thread about academic attainment and feminism, I wandered into Heffers in Cambridge today thinking I'd buy myself some nice feminism theory to read on the bus.

So, I did some searching (past about five displays of the new book on medieval manuscripts at Cambridge and three or four bookcases on military history (which made me think, given the conversation on another thread about violence and masculinity). Eventually, I found politics and after a bit more searching found a couple of short shelves, maybe two feet long, with a predominance of pink-spined books.

Eureka! The feminist section!

It's not good, really, is it? Two small shelves I had to hunt for, on which the predominant colour was pink. Andrea Dworkin? No, sorry, she's out of print and we don't stock any. (Well, they did actually: she's one of the contributors to a compilation feminist reader).

Oooh! Oooh!

But, SGM, doesn't Dworkin say in her article on women in the Holocaust that it is a problem in itself that women's experiences of the Holocaust are subsumed into the general history, in a way that the experiences of different races/sexual orientations are not?

Oh dear .... I feel like the kid in class who jumps out of her chair trying to get her hand out now.

Heh! Don't worry LRD, it sounds impressive to me!

I always wonder why more out of print books but in copyright are not made available in their entireity on Google books, It seems a bit mean and counterproductive for publishers and authors to restrict pages when they don't have a business model to put them out as part of their business. It especially irks me with academics since they especially ought to be in the business of sharing knowledge. As for closed access academic journals, don't get me started

Thanks lisi.

himalaya - I think the problem is the way things go in and out of print. I know Diana Wynne Jones's books were partly out of print a while back, but then after Harry Potter became popular her publisher rebranded her books and now they are selling in high numbers, so they'd have lost out if they'd made them freely available years ago.

SGM - ok, sorry - was mostly just excited you mentioned something that sounded like what I'd just read, you know?

Something a bit suspicious (imo) in my discipline is the way that certain male-authored books that aren't straight lit. theory. (eg. Edward Said's stuff) somehow become part of the canon of literary theory whereas the women don't seem to so much. That gives them more visibility, for a start.

I agree - I thought she made her points very effectively and emotively, too.

I can imagine my lot tying themselves in knots with that witchcraft question, too! I think it's easy to answer any 'gender' question in a very binary, 'good or bad' way. The problem I think with medievalism is that women's history is there all right - but its separation always smacks to some of special pleading, and is often used as an excuse to exclude women from the 'rest' of history/literature. More or less the opposite of what Dworkin described. I'd never realized that for a period as recent as the Holocaust, it could be possible to do that.

I need to read more about the Holocaust - it's something I've avoided since we did it for GCSE as you can't really just pick something up and read, you have to give it your whole attention and it gets to you - but I should read more. I had no idea about any of that.

I just checked iBooks more thoroughly. This is loopy! I searched "Greer", as GG has written approachable feminist books that are extremely well known and should sell well, and nothing. However, they ARE selling two books on practising magic as a Druid and one book on "culturally responsible mathematics", neither of which I would assume to have a huge readership.

Good grief!

Sorry, I should clarify that these books are among those that turned up in my search.

That is odd, isn't it? I was thinking, too - I've fairly often seen other political theory books on academics' bookshelves in their rooms - not sure I've seen the feminist theory, so I will have to have a sneaky peak. I wonder if displaying them is seen as a bit more polemical?