Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Translating FeminismCommunicating Through Books, Spaces and Personal Exchange: Women’s Bookshops as Cultural Translators (1970s–1990s)

Translating Feminism: Communicating Through Books, Spaces and Personal Exchange: Women’s... [This chapter focuses on the intertwined relationship between the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in Switzerland and women’s bookshops which offered feminist literature as well as space for discussions and exchange. We argue that women’s bookshops played a crucial role in various translation processes that were important in order to establish the WLM as a locally embedded and transregionally operative social force which was at the same time oriented towards a transnational feminist network. For this reason, we understand ‘translation’ not only in its literal meaning but also in the sense of a broader process of cultural intermediation. Following a general overview of the WLM and women’s bookshops in Switzerland, the chapter focuses on how the latter acted as cultural translators on two levels. Firstly, the bookshops made a large range of feminist texts available to their clientele. Switzerland’s multilingualism with four official languages led them to be culturally orientated towards different linguistic regions. Moreover, as women’s bookshops in Switzerland existed earlier than feminist publishing houses, many books came from abroad, revealing an impressive linguistic diversity for such a small country. Secondly, the bookshops managed to create an atmosphere of openness by making feminist texts and ideas available not only to activists but also to a broader public. Thanks to those strategies, over the years, some of the women’s bookshops successfully adapted to the ongoing changes in the WLM and the general book market—with all its ambivalences.] http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png

Translating FeminismCommunicating Through Books, Spaces and Personal Exchange: Women’s Bookshops as Cultural Translators (1970s–1990s)

Part of the Palgrave Studies in Language, Gender and Sexuality Book Series
Editors: Bracke, Maud Anne; Bullock, Julia C.; Morris, Penelope; Schulz, Kristina
Bürgi, Lisia; Schulz, Kristina
Translating Feminism — Sep 19, 2021
Download PDF
24 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/springer-journals/translating-feminism-communicating-through-books-spaces-and-personal-fE60O9p6Nl
Publisher
Springer International Publishing
Copyright
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2021
ISBN
978-3-030-79244-2
Pages
91 –115
DOI
10.1007/978-3-030-79245-9_4
Publisher site
See Chapter on Publisher Site

Abstract

[This chapter focuses on the intertwined relationship between the women’s liberation movement (WLM) in Switzerland and women’s bookshops which offered feminist literature as well as space for discussions and exchange. We argue that women’s bookshops played a crucial role in various translation processes that were important in order to establish the WLM as a locally embedded and transregionally operative social force which was at the same time oriented towards a transnational feminist network. For this reason, we understand ‘translation’ not only in its literal meaning but also in the sense of a broader process of cultural intermediation. Following a general overview of the WLM and women’s bookshops in Switzerland, the chapter focuses on how the latter acted as cultural translators on two levels. Firstly, the bookshops made a large range of feminist texts available to their clientele. Switzerland’s multilingualism with four official languages led them to be culturally orientated towards different linguistic regions. Moreover, as women’s bookshops in Switzerland existed earlier than feminist publishing houses, many books came from abroad, revealing an impressive linguistic diversity for such a small country. Secondly, the bookshops managed to create an atmosphere of openness by making feminist texts and ideas available not only to activists but also to a broader public. Thanks to those strategies, over the years, some of the women’s bookshops successfully adapted to the ongoing changes in the WLM and the general book market—with all its ambivalences.]

Published: Sep 19, 2021

Keywords: Women’s bookshops; Feminism; Swiss Women’s liberation movement; Cultural translation; Multilingualism; Transnationalism; Linguistic diversity; Feminist business

There are no references for this article.