Cracking interview with Dr Jenna Ashton (aka @heritagemcr) about feminism, archives, etc.
1. Who are you, and how did you come to be an historian?
I am a Lecturer in Heritage Studies and arts-led researcher, in the Dept. of Art History & Cultural Practices, University of Manchester. I’m also Research Lead for Creative and Civic Futures with our “Creative Manchester” platform, and an Associate Member of the Sustainable Consumption Institute. My work largely focuses on place-based community cultural practices and expression, along with evolving (I hope!) feminist theory and methods. As an artist, curator, and producer, I consider artmaking as a process for thinking and analysis (to misquote Mieke Bal, 2022).
It’s funny you describe me as an historian. I never think of myself as an “historian”, but a strange scholarly combination, working across the sociological, historical, visual, material, spatial, ecological. I’ve always wanted to connect the contemporary with the historical and understand things politically. I finally discovered this was called “cultural studies”, so I guess that’s where I have landed now, with a critical angle on all-things “heritage” practice and discourse.
My background education is mostly in the arts; at A Level I took all arts subjects across literature, language, performance, and film (much to the dismay of my science and sociology teachers). At Uni (I took all three degrees, BA (Hons), MA, PhD at Uni of Manchester, not being able to afford to travel elsewhere, and with other family and work commitments), I first took a combined degree across Drama, Literary Studies, Art History, and Classical Civilisation. It was a running joke that I had the longest degree title of any student graduating in my year. But I didn’t want to drop any subjects after A Levels, and I also didn’t know what I wanted to “specialize” in. So, a combined degree fulfilled that. It was horribly organised and combined students were badly supported; we didn’t belong to any one department, so we were pushed around and ignored quite a bit. It’s funny that interdisciplinarity is such a “thing” now. We were doing it via the combined programme, but we didn’t have the lingo or the zeitgeist. I loved it. I could pick and choose the modules I wanted to take and mix it up into a wonderful artsy-soup. I discovered a love of (and knack for) art history and visual studies [AHVS] (which wasn’t available during school), with a focus on feminist and social practices. I took my MA (FT) and PhD (PT) in AHVS. My PhD analysed childhoods through the lens of contemporary sculpture. It was described by the examiners as not a very “traditional” art history PhD, as it brought together visual arts, sociology, spatial theories, and psychoanalysis. To me, it seemed the most obvious thing in the world to use the visual and plastic arts to make sense of socio-psychological experiences given they emerged within a cultural context. Within a cultural studies dept. or school of art this wouldn’t have been at all odd.
Anyway, since 2018 I have been back at that same department as an employee, working mostly with colleagues in the “cultural practices” side of things or with academics in other arts and science disciplines.
So am I an historian? Kind of. “Historian” always seems such a grand title and as if you should have a very precise and defined period of expertise. I don’t have that. But historical methods are important to all scholarship and practice. I always thought it odd the separation between what I would call “straight” history (with a capital H) and “queer” history (aka art history). It still exists; the two disciplines don’t seem to talk to each other. At some point during my education (and also lived experience) feminist activists, histories, and practices helped me fuse all these disparate academic parts together with my concern for social justice issues. Feminism exists on the edges, in the gaps, defies the binaries. Feminism is also hopeful. It can see a way through the quagmire.
I have a parallel story of work and everyday life that intersects with my uni education and academic development that was/is as equally important as the learning undertaken in the Ivory Towers, but that’s for another interview.
2. Why do we need a feminist analysis and practice around archives and archiving? (Imagine I am asking that in my best Daily Mail voice, muttering about woke Corbynista stalinist social justice warriors)
Archives are part of structures of power and oppression. This is not a “woke-snowflake” interpretation, but a fact acknowledged by archivists and archival science. Archives are not neutral or objective containers of artefacts and documents but, like museums, have evolved through a process of careful (or not so careful) construction – led by the “victors” and those with power. Feminist practices seek to redress or expose structures of power relating to sex and gender (and its intersectional issues), and to evidence and promote differently gendered or sexed experiences and materialisations that have been oppressed or eradicated via oppressive patriarchal systems. Importantly, feminist practices are not just concerned with the historical record, but feed back into our contemporary cultural and social systems, reimagining, shaping, and enacting societies that are fair, equitable, and just. Feminism in the archives makes space for evidencing the marginalised and oppressed; it also enables the documenting and evidencing of its own heritage (feminism as heritage). Where women’s rights are still under threat (along with wider LGBTQ+ peoples), and our bodies are at risk from violence, poverty, and ill-health, feminist analysis and practices are required across all areas of cultural production and its materialisation and systems.
Since 2016 I have been focusing on feminist archival and curatorial practices as methodologies, working with numerous archives and collections, archivists, artists, and women’s organisations to explore these issues through practice and publishing.
In 2017 I published “The Feminists are Cackling in the Archive: A Manifesto for Feminist Archiving (or disruption)” with Feminist Review (download here). It was an invited submission, following an event on archiving women’s performance practice. The Manifesto brings together all the things I still try to do: working collaboratively with people, develop new forms via creative practice, publish varied and interesting pieces that embody the practice (not merely representative or dissemination), and work through serious issues playfully.
3. Are women still being written out of the history? If so, how, and what should people (including ‘male allies’ – because, you know, ultimately everything has to be about them) be doing about that?
First, start by reading (and citing) all the great feminist work that is being done to diversify histories and contemporary accounts of women’s experiences and practices. Second, support women-led initiatives and research aiming to “cackle” and disrupt the record (including providing the funding and infrastructure.) Third, get on and disseminate that work. Fourth, pay women decent wages across all sectors so they are not struggling to survive. Fifth , stop killing women (ideally, this should be first). Sixth, just because she’s a woman with power doesn’t mean she’s a feminist and cares about other marginalised or at-risk women (see various examples in current Conservative Government). But, stories of those women are as equally important to evidence, to remind us that social justice is the work of feminist practice, not simply putting women into powerful positions.
4. What are you working on at present/near future?
Publishing wise, I’m working on an edited collection for Routledge on “Heritage and Gender”, and an experimental authored book for Intellect on “Feminist Co-Production: as a Crochet Textile Playground” (using the work of Japanese artist Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam as a textile metaphor). Practice-wise, I am working in North Manchester (in neighbourhoods with high indices of multiple deprivation) leading an interdisciplinary research project making sense of community resilience under climate change stresses, and exploring the potential of arts practice for supporting social justice. Plus, I’m working on another research project supporting work around riparian treescapes for climate adaptation, land stewardship, and species reintroduction. Now (and in the near future) my work is mostly ecological, a natural progression from feminist cultural work. I also have an adopted archive of an ageing female photographer I want to work on at some point …
5. Anything else you’d like to say.
Amongst the raging at inequalities and injustice, I witness, daily, very ordinary people doing extraordinary things for humanity and other living beings. I hold onto bell hooks’ call for people to practice love and to love each other well. Feminism is hope.