The Women Writers’ Network (WWN) is a node at which vectors of knowledge about
Womens’ writing cluster at different sites across Europe and through the newly
built Women Writers database. At Belgrade University in March 2011, and Chawton
House Library in November 2011, this network of women and men has read and
stitched the term ‘Nodes’ as part of the Embroidered Digital Commons. This
draft paper reflects on the nodal aspects of the WWN in relation to the Digital
Commons.
Network
topologies with their nodes and vectors can be used to map communication
networks of people and knowledge, and their systems of production and
distribution. In 1964 Paul Baran’s distributed network diagram was used to
envisage the many:many communications network of the Internet. This distributed
network is more robust than a centralized network, as communication can be
re-routed through any nodes to reach its destination. In this way the
distributed network is an egalitarian model of utopian freedom (for users to be
producers), and a more efficient model for sustainable communications.
The
definition of 'Nodes' describes a nodal structure of networked communication
through located and virtual sites through which ideas travel and coalesce. This
language of social networks is a paradigm shift in how we value, archive and
communicate knowledge. Rethinking our network topologies provides the
opportunity to map women’s knowledge and writing throughout a range of formats
(letters, textiles, texts) through personal and informal networks as well as
professional and academic structures. Analysis of the Internet provides new
vocabularies and ways of visualizing and thinking about informal distribution
and reception.
The
ethos of the Digital Commons operates within the distributed digital network of
the Internet, which enables all forms of texts to be made public, along with
their html or encoded computer languages. This includes different rescensions
of a text, letters, fragments, notational knowledge, and multiple translations,
which together build an understanding of the scope of ideas in a text. Meaning
is not fixed, but emerges through an understanding of the many contexts for
production and reception. In the digital distributed network images and texts
are freely circulated, changing the nature of the ownership and copyright, and
challenging the notion of the ‘original’ or ‘true’ document.
The
Digital Commons focuses on the potential of the distributed network to create
new levels of access and availability for sharing and researching data (in this
case literature). This ethos of open-access is a challenge to closed forms of
knowledge such as JStor, and closed processes such as blind-peer review.
Instead quality is ensured by open and frank discussion, and measured by the
number of links and references or citations to a text. Economic recuperation is
through unique printed format, and not ubiquitous online access. Instead of
attempting to enforce copyright, perhaps accurate meta-data tagging is more
essential for tracing the provenance of digital material. Only then can
attribution and moral rights be respected and traced.
The
Women Writers Network gathers at particular physical nodes to share their
research. Through presentations and discussions new connections are made
between ideas and influences in womens’ writing across geographies and over
time. This intense social and intellectual activity informs the structure of
the online database located on a server in the Netherlands, which can be
accessed remotely throughout the world. The database is another node in the
WWNetwork which traces connections of influence and reception between women
writers throughout Europe; compiling a glimpse of the extent of women’s social
networks through knowledge and literature over centuries.
In
keeping with the spirit of the Digital Commons: the WWN Database is both an
archive of existing knowledge, and a research tool to discover old knowledge
with the potential to reveal new ways of thinking. Significantly the database
is both physical and virtual as it has emerged from, and is maintained by, a
robust social network of academics and researchers across Europe.
The
networked web of communication is traditionally perceived to be 'female
gendered', in contrast to the more linear hierarchies of patriarchal society.
The distributed and decentralized networks are perhaps more akin to the way in
which women have been able to circulate their written forms of knowledge
through social circles excluded from centralized publishing structures.
Today
the characteristics of women’s work form the backbone of the new flexible
worker in the cultural industries and knowledge economy. Digital networks
enable fast speed computer processing and communications fully exploited by
global capital. At the heart of the crisis of outsourcing and deskilling is the
changing nature of Intellectual Property. Whilst the distributed network of the
Digital Commons supports collective and collaborative writing and making,
whilst the old forms of copyright are rapidly becoming redundant.
In
fact, copyright has often been a poor way of protecting the rights of women
artists, crafters and writers. This is mostly due to the huge administrative
infrastructure required to collect small amounts of money, which are heavily
top-sliced before meager sums reach the final author or maker.
Ann
Bartow, in her paper ‘Fair Use and the Fairer Sex’ (2006) examines the gendered
aspects of copyright law. Historically women have not been recognized in
property law, and so even if they owned the copyright of their work, they were
unable to enter into contracts to be renumerated for the publishing of their
work. Instead any financial gain was kept by the (male) publishers, or passed
onto a husband or male relative (Bartow, 2006, p571). As Astrid Kulsdom
outlined in her presentation, Ouida (Maria Louise Ramée, 1839-1908) suffered
from the lack of synchronized international copyright law.
But as a woman it is likely that she had no legal power to enforce her moral
rights, or rights of attribution, let alone a ‘property right’ over the
translation of her novels form English into Dutch.
Most
interestingly, Bartow discusses the problems of copyright for computer software
and quilting (p573) partly due to the forms of collective production. She
states: “As a general rule, copyright does not easily accommodate
collaborative, creative, online endeavours.” Where authorship is complex and
shifting, and the work emerging and changing over time, without a fixed author
and finished product, copyright has no meaning.
Bartow
highlights blogging gender statistics which reveal that slightly more women
than men create blogs, a form of writing easy to publish and difficult to
copyright. Continuing her analogy of blogging and patchwork, she writes:
“In
some respects, group blogs offer a text-based homology to quilting” (p573).
Both
blogging and patchwork are decentralized networks for both amateur and
professional knowledge sharing. The focused creative project provides a
structure for collective making and discourse.
As
a text, the Embroidered Digital Commons is a collective form of close-reading.
Here embroidery is enacted as reading, not instead of reading. And the content
is both metaphorical and technical. The poetic nature of the text requires
close reading, re-reading, and discussion. This is not a diversion from public
life, but a designation of public space both for making and critical dialogue.
Embroidery
can also be an aid to close-listening. Where the hand and is occupied with
aesthetics and spatial logistics, leaving the brain to concentrate on
processing equally complex information and ideas.
References
Ann Bartow (2006). Fair Use and the
Fairer Sex: Gender, Feminism, and Copyright Law. In: Journal of Gender, Social
Policy & the Law, Vol 14:3.
