AbstractsLaw & Legal Studies

The Library functions as a powerful figuration of power and knowledge in the western cultural imaginary, and the stories that circulate about libraries are gendered stories that link power and knowledge to masculinity and femininity in particular ways. Through an analysis of literary and film narratives, I demonstrate that stories of lost libraries, representations of libraries as labyrinths, and narratives of library destruction are closely related to the stereotype of the female librarian, as both engage profound anxieties concerning rationality, subjectivity, desire and embodiment. I argue that the figuration of the library in the western imaginary is profoundly gendered, and that the problematic stereotypical representation of the female librarian cannot be understood, let alone corrected, outside of the context of the cultural representation of libraries. I take as a starting point that libraries are currently undergoing profound transformations as they are becoming increasingly digitalized, and propose that this offers opportunities for reimagining librarianship in radically different and feminist ways. The research can be positioned in several ways. Firstly, its context can be formulated as the “resonances of loss” – on the one hand of great library collections through the destruction of libraries by war, natural disaster, or time, and on the other hand by the practices of selection and “weeding” that are central to library practice. Secondly, its context concerns the pervasive stereotype of the female librarian as a dowdy old lady on the one hand, and the representation of women’s bodies and desires as disruptive within the library as a space of reason and knowledge on the other hand. I argue that these two cultural preoccupations are in fact two sides of the same medallion, and reflect profound cultural anxieties pertaining to power, knowledge, and gender that can be traced to patriarchal ideologies of reason, objectivity and universality. The dual figurations of the library space and the female librarian can be traced throughout a selection of popular cultural texts that have informed, engaged with, or reformulated these tropes. I take as a starting point a close analysis of Jorge Luis Borges’ The Library of Babel and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, and demonstrate that these narratives combine the most common and most commonly referenced features of library narratives. By investigating how these features reappear throughout popular culture, such as science fiction films (eg. Star Wars, The Matrix), romantic and teen comedies (eg. Threesome, Party Girl, High Fidelity), thriller and adventure films (eg. The Net, Librarian: Quest for the Spear) and horror literature (eg. Four Past Midnight), I show that narrative representations of libraries and librarians show both a surprising coherence as well as puzzling ambiguities, that resonate in the public discourse surrounding library loss and the dislike of librarians. Theories of the archive and poststructuralist feminist theories form the dual lenses that…