Reproductive Failure and Information Work: An Autoethnography

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2019

Publication Title

Library Trends

Volume

67

Issue

3

First Page

436

Last Page

454

ISSN

1559-0682

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2019.0005

Keywords

infertility, information studies, autoethnography

Abstract

In providing an autoethnography of the author's own reproductive failures while working as a librarian, this paper considers the ways in which neoliberalism maps disability onto non-(re)productive bodies thought to be outside the realm of individual control. The author calls upon feminist disability theory to surface themes of embodiment and relationality and to unearth the unrecognized labor of reproductive failure. Suggesting that library and information studies would do well to take seriously all sorts of "failures," the author recommends that we turn to archives of failure; doing so would allow for a richer and more nuanced exploration of how neoliberalism casts some bodies and minds as "normal" and others as not, and makes the necessary space to, rather than celebrate the triumphant, recognize the failed.

Rights

LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 67, No. 3, 2019 (“Disabled Adults in Libraries,” edited by Jessica Schomberg and Shanna Hollich), pp. 436–54. © 2019 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois.

Comments

Locate article here: https://muse-jhu-edu.libproxy.lib.csusb.edu/article/723590

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