Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Reading Room: a Segregated Space for Women in a Portuguese Public Library under a Fascist StatePaula Sequeiros & Sónia PassosNo statistical registers were made on readers’ gender, prior to the opening of theFeminine Reading Room, and so we cannot assess whether the offer of a separate room forwomen did or did not encourage their visits.It should be noted that, from that moment on, the custom practice was that womenwould seat in the General Reading Room, although in a separate ally. This practice onlyended during the 1960’s, according to staff information.We suppose that the children’s reading room physically replaced the FeminineReading Room, at least partially. Not only was this the information transmitted to presentdaysenior professionals orally, but there is a reference in the annual 1948 report to aspecial entrance to the children’s room coinciding with that area. All we could confirm isthat the children’s room, created in 1948, occupied the entire south façade of the building,from 1953 or 1954 onwards 25 .A happy-ending?Truer than reality, the fictional narrative incorporates results of our research in orderto emphasise specific situations and conditions that do not fit into a black-and-white reconstitutionof such reading atmospheres: the provision of literature in the Feminine ReadingRoom does not appear to have been so ideologically controlled as might be expected, forreasons we could not clearly document, but may abduce. First, the fact that these bookswere in great part the result of a donation made by a woman from a notorious family, alongwith the tradition of incorporating legacies as a whole may be a partial answer to this.Second, the fact that books had to be requested from and registered with the staff, whomight oppose the request and possibly report it, added another barrier of procedural controlto what might appear to be free reading. Power and political relations among the libraryadministration, the municipality and the censors, and power relations within the libraryitself may account for a fuller explanation.Women were not actually absent from public space then, although their presencewas frequently forced into social invisibility. Biographical research revealed another layerof invisibilisation superimposed to the use and construction of social space: the invisibilisationof women as historical agents. Was it not for Tília Dulce’s marriage to a prominent man,documentation would surely be even more difficult to locate. Biographical research on twoprominent women’s lives was documented only at much effort, with all the traits of anotherform of gender invisibilisation. The biography of Virgínia de Castro e Almeida is also interestingas a reflection of the ideological oscillations that characterised some intellectuals whenconfronted with a fascist regime. The analysis of her biography, from the omissions to thehighlights, reveals a symptomatic portrait of a woman who was notorious in the culture scene:shredded pieces assembled together and large missing pieces. Her bibliography appears tobe a matter under current research. Her filmography is one of those missing pieces. A disturbingomission, as we may wonder if it might reveal a bolder facet of her personal history. Shewas the first producer in the Portuguese filming industry, an activity almost exclusively male,and her name sounds familiar only to a few experts in the field.25 written sources on the subject, from the administrative archives, are not clear.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches340
Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Reading Room: a Segregated Space for Women in a Portuguese Public Library under a Fascist StatePaula Sequeiros & Sónia PassosAlthough apparently contradictory in formal terms, separate spaces, which meantsegregation for women in the short term, eventually contributed to processes of women’sappropriation of public or semi-public space such as public libraries. If envisaged as a temporarytactical measure, the creation of separate spaces made women’s presence customary insuch spaces, and allowed them a previously unrecognised visibility.The selected historical case demonstrates how this gendered appropriation of spacewas accompanied by conflicting tensions deriving from the power relations at stake in otherareas of women’s everyday life, from the labour market to the use of semi-public and publicspace, from family relations to the right to education. However, no documentation supportingthis specific separatist policy for reading could be found.Finally, we would like to stress that an important progress was made in the field ofrights: a separate space for women, which was initially envisaged as a requirement sustainedby a conservative morality, turned obsolete and evolved to a space used by both women andmen. This form of space appropriation by women was to be sustained by ethical claims of amore equalitarian use of public and semi-public space, which eventually became commonin other places of everyday life.BibliographyAlcoff, L. (1994). Cultural feminism versus Post-Structuralism: the identity crisis in feminist theory.In Nicholas Dirks, Geoff Eley, and Sherry B. Ortner (Eds.), Culture power history: a reader incontemporary social theory. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Almeida, V. D. C. E. (1913). A mulher: história de mulher. A mulher moderna. Educação. Lisboa: LivrariaClássica.Associação para o Ensino Bento de Jesus Caraça. (2001). O papel da Universidade Popular Portuguesa aoserviço da cultura do povo. Lisboa: CGTP. Retrieved from http://www.cgtp.pt/bjc/lido/myre.htm.Balça, Â. (2007). Virgínia de Castro e Almeida e a colecção «Grandes Portugueses»: os livros para criançascomo instrumentos doutrinários. LIBEC Line – Revista em Literacia e Bem-Estar da Criança,(2), 1-10. Retrieved from http://libecline.planetaclix.pt/n2/1GrandesPort.pdf.Baptista, T. (Org.) (2003). Lion, Mariaud, Pallu: franceses tipicamente portugueses. Lisboa: CinematecaPortuguesa.Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto (1984). Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto: exposição no 150ºaniversário da sua fundação. Porto: BPM.Biblioteca Pública Municipal do Porto. (1944). Relatório de actividades [archive document]. Porto.Carvalho, R. D. (1996). História do ensino em Portugal: desde a fundação da nacionalidade até ao fim doregime de Salazar - Caetano. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian.Certeau, M. de (1984). The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Devault, M. L. (1996). Talking back to sociology: distinctive contributions of feminist methodology.Annual Review of Sociology, 22, 29-50.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches341
Page 2 and 3:
© CECS 2013 All rights reservedThi
Page 4 and 5:
Cinematic Landscape and Social Memo
Page 6 and 7:
comprises both remembering and forg
Page 8 and 9:
include important questions related
Page 10 and 11:
Part ICognitive and Emotional Proce
Page 12 and 13:
Narratives and Social Memory from t
Page 14 and 15:
Page 16 and 17:
Page 18 and 19:
Page 20 and 21:
Page 22 and 23:
Page 24 and 25:
Page 26 and 27:
The Lay Historian: How Ordinary Peo
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
Page 32 and 33:
Page 34 and 35:
Page 36 and 37:
Page 38 and 39:
Page 40 and 41:
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 48 and 49:
Emotional Processes in Elaborating
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Transitional Justice Processes, Sha
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71:
Page 72 and 73:
Page 74 and 75:
Page 76 and 77:
Page 78 and 79:
The Past and the Present (re)Visite
Page 80 and 81:
Page 82 and 83:
Page 84 and 85:
Page 86 and 87:
Page 88 and 89:
Page 90 and 91:
Page 92 and 93:
Part IIMedia(ted) Narrativesand Pub
Page 94 and 95:
Hard News Cognitive Shift: from Fac
Page 96 and 97:
Page 98 and 99:
Page 100 and 101:
Page 102 and 103:
Page 104 and 105:
Page 106 and 107:
Page 108 and 109:
Narratives of Death: Journalism and
Page 110 and 111:
Page 112 and 113:
Page 114 and 115:
Page 116 and 117:
Page 118 and 119:
Page 120 and 121:
Researching Identity Narratives in
Page 122 and 123:
Page 124 and 125:
Page 126 and 127:
Page 128 and 129:
Page 130 and 131:
Page 132 and 133:
Page 134 and 135:
Page 136 and 137:
Journalistic Narrative: a Story of
Page 138 and 139:
Page 140 and 141:
Page 142 and 143:
Page 144 and 145:
Page 146 and 147:
Page 148 and 149:
The Works of Sísifo: Memories and
Page 150 and 151:
Page 152 and 153:
Page 154 and 155:
Page 156 and 157:
Page 158 and 159:
Page 160 and 161:
Audiovisual Post-colonial Narrative
Page 162 and 163:
Page 164 and 165:
Page 166 and 167:
Page 168 and 169:
Page 170 and 171:
Page 172 and 173:
Page 174 and 175:
Page 176 and 177:
Page 178 and 179:
Page 180 and 181:
Page 182 and 183:
Page 184 and 185:
Page 186 and 187:
Page 188 and 189:
Page 190 and 191:
Page 192 and 193:
The Subject-Matter of Audiovisual H
Page 194 and 195:
Page 196 and 197:
Page 198 and 199:
Page 200 and 201:
Page 202 and 203:
Page 204 and 205:
Criminal violence in Brazilian movi
Page 206 and 207:
Page 208 and 209:
Page 210 and 211:
Page 212 and 213:
Page 214 and 215:
Page 216 and 217:
Page 218 and 219:
Page 220 and 221:
Part IVEthnic, National and Suprana
Page 222 and 223:
Narratives of Redemption: Memory an
Page 224 and 225:
Page 226 and 227:
Page 228 and 229:
Page 230 and 231:
Page 232 and 233:
Page 234 and 235:
Memory and the Flows of Identity in
Page 236 and 237:
Page 238 and 239:
Page 240 and 241:
Page 242 and 243:
Page 244 and 245:
‘Diaspora Space’ as Heard and O
Page 246 and 247:
Page 248 and 249:
Page 250 and 251:
Page 252 and 253:
Page 254 and 255:
Colonial Missions in the North Amer
Page 256 and 257:
Page 258 and 259:
Page 260 and 261:
Page 262 and 263:
Page 264 and 265:
Page 266 and 267:
Part VSocietal Issues, Collective A
Page 268 and 269:
Collective Mobilization and the Soc
Page 270 and 271:
Page 272 and 273:
Page 274 and 275:
Page 276 and 277:
Page 278 and 279:
Page 280 and 281:
Page 282 and 283:
Page 284 and 285:
Narratives as Prison ‘Escapes’:
Page 286 and 287:
Page 288 and 289:
Page 290 and 291: Narratives as Prison ‘Escapes’:
Page 298 and 299: Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 300 and 301: Drawings and Narrative: the Inmates
Page 314 and 315: Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
Page 316 and 317: Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres d
Page 328 and 329: Adozinda Goes to the Feminine Readi
show all

Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?