I have a book about Louise Bourgeois. It was made after a retrospective of her work at the CAPC in Bordeaux. This book contains drawings, excerpts from her diaries, letters, and interviews with Louise Bourgeois. When I came upon this book it amazed me because it was the first book that gave me an insight into the way an artist works, and the way their work is a part of their life and how that influences an art process and the finished work. The letters, the drawings, the interviews, and the diary entries all helped me to form an idea of the way Louise Bourgeois made her work in the context of her life and how her life was lived in the context of being an artist.
I do not want to talk about whether or not Louise Bourgeois is a feminist, or whether or not her work can be seen as feminist. That is not why I am calling attention to the book about her. What I am interested in is what this book represents. I see this book as a presentation tool for an archive of traces left by Louise Bourgeois. It communicates the living and working conditions of Louise Bourgeois. It also represents three forms in which women in particular have left traces of their experiences ( Interpreting Women’s Lives, p.4). These are: oral history, made visible in the book by the discussions and interviews that are transcribed there; letter writing; and diary entries. These traces are autobiographical, meaning that they are written by a women about her own life. I see email, online chat groups, and webblogs as present mutations of letters, oral history transmission, and diaries.
What I think is interesting about these traces is not just the information that gets passed on (the text, for example) but also the process of passing on the information. I propose that these ways of passing on information create a kind of intimacy, because they directly implicate the 'other', thus their memories, their experiences, in the transmission of the information. Letter writing and oral histories suggest an exchange or dialogue between people. Diaries, on the other hand, are written privately and are personally intimate; to read another's diary echos this intimacy. Intimacy necessitates vulnerability; a mutual vulnerability and trust which is part of the process of meeting or making space for the other. Making a space for the other to speak ( rather than speaking for the other) is for me a feminist act. Thus intimacy, as a process, is where I see the connection between oral histories, letter writing, diaries, and feminism.
In the 1960’s women in North America came together in a politicized way to talk about their lives. They called this activity ‘consciousness-raising’, and is an example of women sharing oral histories. Women coming together to speak in a politicized way was not a new activity, one obvious example being the suffragette gatherings in North America in the late 19th and early 20th century. However, the suffragette meetings had a different ‘goal’ than the consciousness-raising groups. Suffragettes were working towards getting the right to vote for women. Consciousness-raising groups were a place where women came together to speak about their day-to-day lives, and if there was a ‘goal’ other than the act of sharing experiences, it was for women to see their lives from a different perspective. This act of sharing is what I see as a process of intimacy in conscousness-raising groups.