A Publishing Assemblage: Building Book History Methodology through Feminist Periodicals

This paper draws on the insights provided by Robert Darnton’s communications circuit to raise questions about the print objects we investigate. Noting the emphasis that Darnton’s circuit places on the book as a cultural object, Beins considers what a circuit might look like that centers feminist periodicals. As print products, feminist periodicals fissure the apparent wholeness of the textual object. As products of feminist praxis, they push us to look at the politics of publishing and to consider why and how people and processes shape a text’s life cycle. Feminist periodicals, especially newsletters and newspapers, disrupt the linear chronology and clear, distinct roles suggested by a circuit. To deal with the messiness and nonlinearity of these print products, Beins offers the “publishing assemblage” as a concept that can honor the idiosyncratic nature of feminist periodicals. Though grounded in readings of feminist periodicals, Beins ultimately offers the publishing assemblage as a methodology for book history that can allow researchers to describe the myriad practices associated with print, including the seemingly infinite practices of writing, editing, publishing, and reading.