The collective memory of 1970s–1980s feminist science fiction fandoms: A case in reflexivity and historiography for fan studies practices

Abstract

This article proposes a reinterpretation of a classical corpus of North American literary science fiction published from 1974 to 1993 by emphasizing the role of memory activism. During the 1980s neoconservative backlash, feminist fans gave these fanzines a central role in their collective narrative. However, far from being univocal, the new generation of fans renewed and contested the narrative. My goal is to explain why fan and feminist practices converged around memory activism and what power dynamics were at play and to understand how the gaps within and the exclusion from the main feminist SF narrative led to debates and renewals. I demonstrate that memory works predate the emergence of feminist SF and that fans' memory work played a central role in ensuring the autonomy of this subgenre, creating spaces for experimentation organized around feminist concerns.