The female memory factory: How the gendered labour of memory creates mnemonic capital

Abstract

Within feminist memory studies the economy has largely been overlooked, despite the fact that the economic analysis of culture and society has long featured in research on women and gender. This article addresses that gap, arguing that the global economy matters in understanding the gender of memory and memories of gender. It models the conceptual basis for the consideration of a feminist economic analysis of memory that can reveal the dimensions of mnemonic transformation, accumulation and exchange through gendered mnemonic labour, gendered mnemonic value and gendered mnemonic capital. The article then applies the concepts of mnemonic labour and mnemonic capital in more detail through a case study of memory activism examining the work of the Parragirls and the Parramatta Female Factory Precinct Memory Project (PFFP) in Sydney, Australia. The campaigns have worked to recognize the memory and history of the longest continuous site of female containment in Australia built to support the British invasion. The site in Parramatta, which dates from the 1820s, was a female factory for transported convicts, a female prison, an asylum for women and girls, an orphanage and then Parramatta Girls Home. The Burramattagal People of Darug Clan are the Traditional Owners of the land and the site is of practical and spiritual importance to indigenous women. This local struggle is representative of a global economic system of gendered institutionalized violence and forgetting, The analysis shows how the mnemonic labour of women survivors accumulates as mnemonic value that is then transformed into institutional mnemonic capital. Focusing on how mnemonic labour creates lasting mnemonic capital reveals the gendered dimensions of memory which are critical for ongoing memory work.

Moving hearts: How mnemonic labour (trans)forms mnemonic capital

“…This research extends some earlier modest contributions to memory economies in which I examined the material economy of mining rare earths to create digital memories (Reading, 2014; Reading and Notley, 2015); developed a blue print for conceptualising digital memory economies (Reading and Notley 2017); and an analytical framework for how feminist memory activists create mnemonic capital (Reading, 2019). What this article adds is an analysis of how the labour of memory produces different forms of memory.…”

The labour of place: Memory and extended reality (XR) in migration museums

“…Migration museums are seen as sites of creative mnemonic practice, where memories of migration and belonging are staged (Lanz, 2016; Whitlock, 2017). Framing memory as creative practice helps to reveal the ‘mnemonic labour’ obscured in digital and transnational memory (Reading, 2019). Focusing on labour and locality within digital and web-based memory practices also reveals how both places and memories are made and unmade.…”

Class and Memory Activism

“…Finally, memory scholars are increasingly paying attention to the links between gender and class (Reading 2019). From comparative welfare research, we know that the life-long economic penalties of motherhood vary according to normative images about the family that are baked into social policy schemes.…”