The Media-tion of Feminist Messages

Simone Murray, Mixed Media: Feminist Presses and Publishing Politics, London: Pluto Press, 2004.

Reviewed by Anthea Taylor

In Mixed Media, Simone Murray provides a valuable critical analysis of feminist publishing and the political and ethical dilemmas posed by the 'mainstreaming' of feminist writing. ‘Mixed media’ is the term she uses to signal the dilemma all feminist presses must negotiate: profit-making or politics? That said, she persistently exposes the flaws in such binary logic to offer a complex, multilayered analysis of feminist publishing and its unique political dilemmas. In an engaging style, Murray offers a desperately needed history of feminist publishing activism, coupled with an astute awareness of its contemporary context, and concludes by looking towards the future of feminist publishing in an environment where its very raison d’ệtre is being put under strain. Refusing to consider the feminist publishing industry in an isolationist fashion, she augments this focus by persistently referring back to the wide publishing industry and the place of feminism (and ideology more broadly) therein. The originality of Murray’s study is not only the vast stores of hitherto un-analysed material upon which she draws, but also her critical approach. Her argument is underpinned by the idea that the debate over feminist publishing needs to be reframed, and Mixed Media provides the solid basis for feminist scholars to further destabilise the purity/co-optation (218) dichotomy that has thus far stymied this debate. She questions throughout the arbitrary distinction between a ‘“core” feminism and a ‘hostile mainstream “exterior”’ (211); such a reconceptualisation of feminist publishing practice, she argues, is imperative if ‘the sector is to survive in recognisable form in the twenty-first century’ (211).

Murray’s first chapter places her study within the broader context of media and women’s studies, exposing the deficiencies of both disciplines in relation to the mechanics (and politics) of feminist publishing. As she highlights, the area of publishing has been relegated to a 'no man's land' in feminist media studies (18), particularly given that analyses from a political economy perspective have become decidedly unfashionable. For Murray, in a critical sense, the book and the context of its production have been woefully overlooked in favour of other more demonstrably ‘popular’ cultural products (19-20). Having fully established the substantial gap to be filled by a work such as this, her analysis is divided into chapters on the compromised independence of feminist publishers, the racial politics of feminist publishing, the institutionalisation (and delimitation) of feminism through academic publishing, the altered socio-political contexts that have resulted a shift in the fortunes of ‘radical’ feminist publishers, and the commodification of feminism through the commissioning and marketing of five feminist ‘bestsellers’.

In Chapters One to Four, she treats a number of feminist presses as case studies, her focus being overwhelmingly on British publishing houses (with sporadic references to their counterparts in America, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand). The first of these chapters considers how the internationally successful Virago Press negotiated the demands of the British women’s movement (including in its academic forms) and those of the commercial publishing industry, demands which its owners refused to view as competing. She tracks Virago’s attempts to make feminism available to those both within and without the British women’s movement. Placing it in its historical context, she underscores the remarkable nature of Virago’s ‘mainstreaming’ project. Outlining the political, ethical and financial problems posed by such an ambitious aim, Murray is not disdainful of the pragmatism embraced by women at Virago as part of its attempt to enhance feminism’s marketability and popularity. As she remarks, ‘in an age where politics and marketing have become increasingly indistinguishable, the embrace of consumerism in the name of the feminist cause may constitute a supremely expedient political tactic’ (65).

In Chapter Two, the racial politics of feminist publishing is shown to add another layer of complexity to this fraught ideological territory. Murray looks deeply into The Women’s Press in Britain to consider how being housed in a ‘parent’ company, and its concomitant lack of financial autonomy, impacts upon what is publicly made available as women’s or feminist writing/thought. For those involved in The Women’s Press, the ability to ‘maintain revenue flow and political bite’ (96) was complicated due to its ownership by a mainstream umbrella company that ultimately denuded its feminist workers of editorial independence. In this chapter she also tackles the under-representation of black women in both feminist and mainstream publishing houses, an elision that prompted women from Black Women Talk, Sheba and Urban Fox Press to establish their own. Murray also underscores how black women’s writing has been constituted as lucrative within the mainstream publishing industry, but she presciently questions what will happen if/when mainstream publishers believe the market for such texts has been satiated.

In Chapter Three, Murray emphasises how feminist knowledge production and dissemination, and the very discipline of ‘women’s studies’ (or, increasingly, ‘gender studies’), has been overwhelmingly shaped by the mainstream publishing industry. She observes that ‘feminism has been seriously remiss in largely declining to examine the material preconditions of its own knowledge and the institutional circuits for feminist scholarship’s rapid dissemination’ (125). Through the example of Pandora, she interrogates ‘multinational involvement in feminist knowledge creation’ (99). In this chapter, as in Chapter Four, her focus is on the status of feminism as commodity. In particular, she is critical of the tendency to package texts directed at women as necessarily feminist texts, with insufficient awareness of the gender politics of such publications (116). In this chapter, she highlights both the constraints and the opportunities of academic women engaging with mainstream publishing houses over independently feminist ones.

Radical feminist presses seem to have the most at stake, and are not surprisingly the most ambivalent about participation in the commercial publishing enterprise. The politics/profit dichotomy, as she illustrates in Chapter Four, is at its strongest in this context. Such presses, where controlling both the medium and the message is paramount, seek to create a production environment that does not replicate the exclusionary structures of more traditional publishing firms, hence their commitment to non-hierarchical organisational practices coupled with an underlying suspicion of the ‘commercial imperative’ (129). She questions the sustainability of the feminist media theory of a radical bent underpinning these enterprises and its advocacy of separatism, the currency of which has considerably diminished as feminism has become more diffuse and, in many senses, institutionalised through realms such as publishing. Like earlier chapters, this one consists of three original case studies of the radical feminist publishing endeavour: Onlywomen Press, Sheba Feminist Publishers, and Silver Moon Books. Of such presses, Murray is not afraid to ask whether an impossible desire for ‘political credibility’ impacted upon their commercial solvency, seeking in particular to expose the often-dire financial consequences of a romanticised anti-commercialism. Further, she sagaciously observes that while discrediting ‘mainstream presses, radical feminism failed to confront the reality that their own presses were ‘profit-seeking enterprise[s]’ (153-154).

Also included is a chapter on ‘mainstream’ publishers and works by high profile authors such as Germaine Greer, Kate Millett, Betty Friedan and Naomi Wolf which have been marketed as exemplars of modern feminism; as the one that most overlaps with my own research interests, I found this chapter highly engaging. Murray addresses the relatively neglected question of feminist ‘bestsellers’ and their positioning within a feminist canon in many senses constructed by the ‘mainstream’ publishing industry itself. Instead of dismissing these texts outright, she analyses their circulation and the cultural capital of their ‘celebrity’ authors. She makes clear that feminist criticism has failed to adequately deal with how these texts (with authors whose connection to any form of organised feminism is at times tenuous at best), as well as mainstream media culture in a broader sense, mediate contemporary public perceptions of feminism. In this chapter, Murray also turns her focus to a specific sub-genre of the feminist ‘blockbuster’: the feminist sequel, a type of text which magnifies one of the key differences between independent women’s presses and mainstream houses: the marketing machine (189). For multinational publishers, the feminist sequel (the most prominent of which is Germaine Greer’s The Whole Woman) is not surprisingly believed to be commercially attractive, tapping into what appears to be a pre-existing readership. As Murray makes clear, the feminist sequel can be perceived as a disingenuous profiteering exercise or as a means to further feminism’s sphere of influence. This chapter most starkly illustrates the need for recognition of the interdependence of feminist and ‘mainstream’ publishers in the contemporary context.

The ‘Afterword’ of Mixed Media explores the future of feminist publishing in the context of wider debates about the demise of the book publishing industry. Here, Murray is forthright in her challenge to the ‘technophoric’ embrace of digital over print communication (214). Further, she suggests that apocryphal ‘death of the book’ pronouncements have lost some of their momentum, and these hyperbolic 1990s proclamations have been exposed as just that. She ultimately reaffirms feminism’s continuing indebtedness to print culture, while underscoring the promotional and marketing possibilities yielded by digital technologies. To conclude, Murray makes trenchant observations about the future challenges to the dissemination of feminist thought and reiterates her book’s central thesis: that the politics/profit antithesis in debates over feminist publishing needs to be transcended; her own work has shown how it is possible to perform such a critical refiguration.

For me, the text’s most valuable aspect is that Murray throughout is cognisant of the difficulty of maintaining a distinct feminist counter public sphere through a separatist publishing industry when a fixed distinction between feminism and the ‘mainstream’ (itself a deeply problematic signifier) is no longer possible: ‘Traffic between the margins and the mainstream of cultural production is now so plentiful and complex that any such attempts at watertight classifications obscure more than they illuminate’ (218). The conviction which underpins her analysis that feminist cultural criticism needs to take the area of feminism’s engagement with the ‘mainstream’ seriously is laudable and refreshing. That said, she does not uncritically celebrate the at times problematic forms of feminism that (are permitted to) circulate in and through such publications: ‘The fact that the most dire predictions of separatist feminist media theorists have failed to eventuate should not tempt feminists into the opposite response – an unduly sanguine embrace of the mainstream’ (192). Throughout, she skilfully attempts to undercut the politics/profit binary in which her analysis is strategically framed, recognising that shifting contexts of production and consumption make the destabilisation of this dichotomy not only desirable but politically necessary.

Anthea Taylor’s doctorate, focusing on how Australian feminism was figured in 1990s print media culture, was completed through the School of English and Women’s Studies Program at the University of New South Wales. She currently works as a policy advisor for the NSW Government.