Information Activism

In an age when technological innovation itself is often assumed to make the world a better place, Cait McKinney reminds us that, for the past fifty years, lesbian feminist activists have resourcefully patched together their own heterodox information infrastructures-composed of telephone hotlines and spiral-bound notebooks, index cards and digitization technologies, hacked tools and customized protocols-to serve clear social and ethical ends. Their information activism enabled them to create systems of connection and care that are responsive to human need, rather than, as is so common today, to advertisers and algorithms. -- Shannon Mattern, author of * Code and Clay, Data and Dirt: Five Thousand Years of Urban Media * Through what might seem like an unlikely mashup of lesbian feminism and information studies, Cait McKinney illuminates both in original and compelling ways. The novel concept of information activism is a valuable contribution to understandings of social movements and counterpublics. And McKinney sheds new light on often misunderstood or neglected histories of lesbian feminism by exploring amateur obsessions with circulating information, including digital media. Together, information and lesbian feminism become unexpectedly sexy, erotic, and affectively charged. -- Ann Cvetkovich, author of * Depression: A Public Feeling * Steeped in the words, culture, vernacular, ephemera, and ways of interacting that have been refined by decades of lesbians, queers, and other feminists. The details are delightful. The writing is warm. Individuals and communities come to life on the page. -- Alexandra Juhasz * Lambda Literary Review * What can we extrapolate from the sparse log that is left behind? In Information Activism, McKinney ... approaches this question with palpable respect for those doing the work at the time and with a sharp curiosity for the pieces of information that they didn't leave behind. Each chapter examines a different kind of network-newsletters, hotlines, indexing projects, and archives-and centers the women who created and maintained them to make lifesaving, community-sustaining information available and accessible. -- Meerabelle Jesuthasan * The Nation * Saturated with vivid historical detail, a testimony to McKinney's extensive archival research. . . . The book's intimate depictions of pre-digital information management invite its readers to reflect on the staggering amount of slow, painstaking technology work that went into feminism's second wave. -- Deborah Thurman * Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory *