As is the case with traditional archives, the creation of descriptive data for FemTechNet materials involved engagement with minutiae. In the early process of determining what held value, I found myself lingering in the descriptive acts of differences between receipts and of contracts negotiated and then withdrawn or modified. FemTechNet’s ephemera spoke to meeting institutional requirements for legitimacy through adherence to demands and policies. The records of the collective illustrate its position as an extension of the universities where its operations occurred. The evidence of the labor involved in meeting institutional demands amplified as the collective’s records and resources — its “homes” — moved from institution to institution. The records reflected the varying requirements of one university against another, illustrating the differences among institutions and their expectations for “legitimate” undertakings. Through a feminist lens, these records revealed the requirements of various academic institutions and the hidden labor entailed in meeting those requirements.

The procession of mundane and hidden acts affirms how little trust exists between institutions and those who endure them as an aspect of loving the subversive or fledgling project or possibility. Receipts or dropped communications or unfinished grant applications are evidence of the difficulty created by institutions, even as FemTechNet was overseen by a group of widely recognized and respected intellectuals within and outside of academia. Records that exist as a response to institutional demands are reminders of affiliation as a process of seeking — validation, funding, legitimacy, recognition. They highlight the ongoing role of a neoliberal university to produce workers who continue the status quo of late capitalism, and its position as accountable to (the idea of) a public that does not view knowledge, in and of itself, as a productive activity.

An archive allows, potentially, for its users to learn and unveil the relationship between collective members and to trace the spaces of care and solace that form in the midst of a university. Emphasizing the affective and affectively feminist dimensions within the archive of FemTechNet acts as a criticism of the neoliberal ideologies that shape academic institutions [Cifor 2016]. Building from Cvetokvich’s archive of feelings, Cifor posits that the inclusion of affect “is necessary in order to trouble dominant power relations and adequately reflect the lives and meet the needs of the diverse communities that archivists document and serve”  [Cifor 2016, 18]. FemTechNet records provide evidence of the demand for academic products and of the repeated steps to meet the demands of the affiliate or granting body. The affect hidden here is a dragging, a tedium, an attention to detail that is forever shaped by the ways power and material access create and abruptly curtail the possibility of critical pursuits.

The dynamic archives envisioned by Irish [Irish 2016] contrasted heavily with the materials for which I created descriptive information. While I did not often consider how the archive of FemTechNet born-digital documents might sit in relation to other collections within its academic institutional home, the idea of the univeristy as a “home” subtly changed the shape of my description [Eichhorn 2014]. My own assumptions of “archival proximity” — between contrasting collections, between individual objects within the FemTechNet collection — influenced my descriptions [Eichhorn 2014, 232]. Despite a drift to appear objective and professional, the records’ descriptions contain potent but latent affective aspects. There is a possibility that, in cleaning up the archive — erasing duplicates or near duplicates, organizing the messiness of fervor and desire (and limited resources) — the affective links become obscured or broken.

In other instances, the loss of affect is challenged through the experiences and recordings of those who lived, saw, enacted, understood, cried about, were hurt by, or otherwise felt the actual impact of events. This is what the archive seems to continually lose and loose — and any researcher who wishes to explore the affective dimensions of FemTechNet, a decidedly feminist project, may find that affect is only inferred by changes of direction, by the frequency of co-publishing, or the (possibly) inaccurate measure of a facial expression or tone of voice. These exist, for the most part, in the imaginary of the collective’s archive.

The imagined permeates archival existence [Gilliland and Caswell 2016]. The desire for affect and evidence is a carrying forth of a particular feminist tradition of engaging silences. Part of the feminist archival project is to “envision new ways that archival description, retrieval, and use can be reworked to take absences — and their attending affects — into account”  [Gilliland and Caswell 2016, 73]. This project may also entail an uncovering of where affect acts as absence — either through the creation of descriptive information, the privileging of particular topics, or through the individual or collective omission of affective experiences. In short, the archive matters, but the archive, and its creators, could always be lying, withholding, hiding something.

There are many reasons to lie, to withhold, to hold multiple locations at once, only allowing some of them to come into focus. Research on trans- feminist and queer (both “LGBTQ” and strange) archives has engaged with the functions of intentional silences [Cowan 2018]. Shotwell, in a discussion of women’s positions formed by the early definitions of AIDS, explains that feelings of failed memory and of omission may have occurred because they are “experiences as a past from the point of view of an unexpected future”  [Shotwell 2016, 65]. The archive may undo the linear aspects of time in its holding of recollection and materials that were actively erased through institutional acts.

Archivists, the keepers of information, are responsible for futures in which information is more available or absences are more descriptively defined. Lee outlines this in relation to Berlant’s conceptions of what belongs or becomes acceptable as a discourse of nationalism alongside Gordon’s ideas of ghostly encounters [Lee 2017]. Here, the silence, the absence, is a haunting. Haunting, memory, and rupture are situated in the spaces between and relationships within the archival collection. For users of the FemTechNet archive, encounters informed by knowledge of the organizing principles of the collective may introduce affect as a haunting absence.

The digital plays a particular role in revealing the loss of affective presence. In digital environments that are often structured through claims to masculinity or calls for competition, a feminist, collective presence challenges the culture. Due to such powerful structures, the feminist archive is an act against historical silences and monolithic narratives. Without adhering to techno-utopian approaches to the digital and with caution toward the method of conveyance as related to the medium of original content [Eichhorn 2014], it is still possible to explore how the digital potentially disrupts silence. By no means available to all, the digital archive may still create new possibilities through intention or serendipity. Withers, while deeply critical of the intentions that sit behind the construction of for-profit archives and short-lived digital projects, explains that “[d]igital metadata can place feminist histories within networks of reference and association that may help to assuage the ephemeral conditions of feminist histories that are often subject to dramatic cycles of recovery and loss”  [Withers 2017, 686]. Placing a discussion of the FemTechNet archive alongside projects such as the Women’s Liberation Music Archive described by Withers and the Chicana por mi Raza archive described by Cotera becomes a way of addressing silences, of positioning projects within a frame of reference and an imagined network [Cotera 2015].

Not all silences and losses are affectively negative. Femerality, for instance, was one of the formative aspects of the FemTechNet collective. FemTechNet members acknowledged the possibility of their own ephemeral engagement with the collective alongside the potential that materials and events would not necessarily have permanence. For FemTechNet the concept of femerality worked toward an honesty and trust that countered the material record of FemTechNet's interaction with many (but not all) institutional affiliations and records, but did not always reveal how shifts in the collective’s perspective occurred over time. As with other documents of collective projects, “[e]ssential pieces of information, which might answer questions and direct research, are not necessarily tangible or archived”  [Ault 2013, 105].

Digital archival collections can but do not inherently push against the silence and absence that feminists so often seek to highlight. Cotera explores the possibilities of the archive as holding the “discursive power” of history and existence [Cotera 2015, 784]. The discursive power of the institutional archive can hold multiple meanings. In one, reading the silence and the absence within the archive becomes a tool to work against the historical narrative of hegemonic power. In another, “subaltern knowledges are recovered only to be recirculated as scholarly products that reify the academy’s authoritative status as a site of knowledge production”  [Cotera 2015, 786]. In yet another, feminist archivista positions reshape the archive into something collaborative, collective, and generative [Cotera 2015, 796]. Here, the “common becomes a new terrain”  [Cotera 2015, 789]. It is possible that the documentation of collectivity, however unrecorded in its discord and adherence, pushes against individualistic approaches to the institutional archive. The unrecorded then, might act as contrast.

In a discussion of lesbian oral histories, Chenier implicates the archivist as responsible for the the ethical balance between the personal — a history — and the political — a collective meaning achieved through access to these histories [Chenier 2015]. At sway here are the issues of confidentiality and consent. In a world where the terrain of acceptance or (at minimum) tolerance continues to shift and entail forms of intense retribution (what Chenier describes as “privacy anxieties”) [Chenier 2015], archivists must respect LGBTQ individuals who dare not be outed by the archive. It is not a far stretch, in this moment, to imagine that the same shifts can, and do, occur across affiliations with feminist projects that seek to undo institutionally maintained systemic forces of racism, sexism, and homophobia while also being located in the middle and interstices of these institutions.

Add to this the knowledge that those with power (be they individuals with class or race privilege or hiring institutions involved in vetting processes) have utilized the digital record against those without power at increasingly alarming rates. The availability of data that can be used to identify members of FemTechNet, even if it is only an associational belonging, can be enough for those who want to invalidate or threaten the work of feminist and anti-racist groups. The methods of data discovery, collection, and dissemination among antagonists has been complex and may mean that silence, while a burden, can also become a refuge from attack — that engaging in feminist or other political projects outside of mainstream recognition and without leaving a trace is a way of seeking protection.

Alternately, the archive offers up the possibility of recognition and encouragement. In utopian formulations, the archive serves as a point of recognition and resonance and the archive can be activated in such a way that “in looking back, activists might see innovative ways of intervening in the(ir) present”  [Buchanan and Bastian 2015, 431]. There is, in the archive, a desire to be “recounted” as well as “open-ended”  [Ault 2013, 110]. The archive of FemTechNet records and activities may provide a historical grounding for future feminist projects that broadly grapple with and utilize technologies. Beyond speaking to the possibility of the existence of distributed feminist collectives, the archive may provide background information that allows the next iteration of similar projects to grow from the knowledge developed by FemTechNet.

My own reflections on shaping the archive and its descriptive data are evident in the process of conducting open-ended interviews with members of the FemTechNet collective. While I did not highlight the anxieties I felt or tensions I identified previous to the interview process, I did attend to the topics addressed in this section when collective members brought them to the fore. As the concerns identified herein are relevant to the construction of feminist archival projects, there were often areas of overlap between topics raised by interviewees and those present in the above contemplations.

FemTechNet was and is still shaped by institutional forces. It was established to create publicly untraceable links, specifically through a redistribution (“pool”ing) of the power held by respected academic feminists through mentorship, networks of support letters to institutions for job placements, and material resources. In thinking of institutional sways over the shape of the collective (sways that are often passingly present in the documents in the archive), interviewees discussed the importance of leveraging resources and maintaining a collective formation that, while dispersed, continued to be composed of and encouraged prestigious feminist technological engagement. Resources defined the possibilities available to the collective not only in relation to grant seeking (and the “structural challenges” caused because many granting bodies “explicitly forbid political advocacy”) but also general funding.

Interviewees indicated the fraught nature of creating feminist work through the resources of the institution. They made active decisions not to “play by the rules” in their implementation of feminist practices that often ran a hard counter to institutional logics. Given the feminist disruption of the university as a goal, they also noted specific points where institutions benefitted from the incorporation of FemTechNet courses or materials, which were often brought into being through massive amounts of hidden labor. Much of the evidence of FemTechNet, its public face, depended on energetic devotions often unseen, unacknowledged, and even derided within institutions; these “devotions” were performed as a “third or fourth job” or unwaged labor. Alongside generating cultural standing for institutions through concealed work, members in institutional placements were also subject to the schedules and bureaucratic buttresses of institutional requirements. Interviewees were forced to work outside of an affective, reactive, and feminist time frame and instead function in the slow pull of academic rationality.

When prompted, interviewees noted the intense institutional requirements that called for the minutiae I described in preparing the archive for institutionalization as part of the work of redistributing resources throughout FemTechNet (one stated that minutiae is “very live” in the process of the work). Others noted proactive documentation as a survival strategy, an acknowledgement that FemTechNet, as a collective, flows in, out, and around institutional requirements. Individual institutional affiliations shaped how information was created and maintained, and often information was lost when individuals changed positions. The work of creating and maintaining documentation was also discussed in relation to precarity, specifically that of adjunct and untenured members of the collective. Redistributing power entailed redistributing the more grueling tasks of accounting for the collective, and several interviewees spoke of the attempt to balance their own positions of holding power and having academic security by securing institutional resources.

For all of the institutional requirements that adhere in the FemTechNet archive, members viewed it as an alternative to professional associations and other academically-based projects. Its appeal lay in how it gave space for “ambivalent/ambiguous” affective ways that countered the isolating institutional placements in which interviewees found themselves. Collective members repeatedly brought up the Allied Media Conference and activist approaches to organizing as possible new forms for the collective. Among the reasons for a shifting toward activist approaches were an undoing of hierarchies of institutional prestige, the incorporation of activist ethics, and a “distrust of institutions in [the] neoliberal model.”

Affect was a salient feature in how interviewees described the collective. Even though affect was intentionally flattened in the records that form the archive, there would be no documentation without the affective resonances that drew members to the network. Affective features of the network were described in its countering professionalism and professional isolation, as a motivator for continuing the work of FemTechNet, and as consistently, though ephemerally, enacted and informed feminist practice.

Interviewees noted the danger of documenting affect not only in its inherent vulnerability but also in light of the institutionally created binary between professionalism and emotional expression. Interviews often described FemTechNet in comparison to institutional professionalism through statements that “when you are in academia you are always in a competitive environment ... I don't spend a lot of time with these folks but there's a sense of support.” They noted that “productivity comes second” (to well-being) in the efforts of the collective, and that the effort undertaken to make contact and to observe others’ affective states could not be captured in documentation and could be professionally deleterious for more precarious members if it were available.

The draw of the network was, for many, this affective resonance. It was desirable for what it represented — a feminist ethos that many members shared prior to their decision to join FemTechNet. It offered an alternative to “feelings of isolation common around feminist scholars.” Several interviewees, in discussing their personal relationships to institutions, noted feeling alone and that it was “very significant having colleagues.” FemTechNet met a lack that many interviewees experienced in affectively repressive institutional environments.

Affective salience was also part of what kept individuals in the network. FemTechNet’s position as a “very open space to emotion and interpersonal attention” provided a respite from often spiritually crushing institutional placements (one interviewee noted that it allowed her to “continue to work in institutional locations... instead of feeling like dying all the time.”) The value of affective ties within the network surpassed the personal costs of often unpaid labor. Within their personal relationships that were facilitated by the collective, members could admit that, despite their best intentions, they were exhausted by the movement between professional and other realms. Relationships with other FemTechNet members provided forums to admit feelings of being drained by the requirement to be driven by personal passion in the production of FemTechNet materials or the emotional weight of affectively saturated interactions with students. Interviewees expressed the marginalization they experienced in their institutional placements in opposition to the joy, sorrow, and complexity they moved through and co-created with FemTechNet friends and colleagues. They had weathered storms with other collective members — “FemTechNet: We cry together” — and learned the subtle nuances of each others’ moods and humors. The strength of affective bonds was clear through descriptions — “we love each other,” “it was always the thing — no one could believe they were going to the meeting and then halfway through — joy.” These bonds were not always pleasant — they involved forgiveness, patience, and an acknowledgement of tension. They were also, ultimately, productive in illustrating the goal and intentions of the overall network, in meticulously crafted and anonymously published materials, and in the “astonishment, joy... the affectual nature” of research itself.

Affect was everpresent and elusive, even beyond interviewees’ descriptions of active forces as motivators for joining and continuing in the collective. While the processes of affective efforts were most present in the check-ins at the beginnings of meetings, statements about FemTechNet were almost always followed by descriptions of the ephemeral encounter. At times, attempts to retain and foster that ephemerality meant that recording Bluejeans meetings might lessen the likelihood that people were open with one another when they met. Adding to the passing nature of check-ins were accounts of the raucous face-to-face encounters — encounters that, at times, took place after years of virtual interaction and co-production. In-person encounters allowed for deeper connections between members and gave (for some interviewees) a sense of depth and reality to on-line meetings.

The introduction of new technologies and new uses of technologies were noted as increasing the affective ties within FemTechNet. Bluejeans (a video and chat platform) was one of the ways institutional ties could be leveraged for the (affective) purposes of the network. Within Bluejeans meetings, several types of communications occurred — from spoken to chat to gestural — with people performing in the medium in particular ways. For instance, one interviewee noted several people in the chat who were “really funny... riff off of what people are saying out loud.” Another noted that affective relationships to technology — proclivities toward, avoidance of — shaped the nature of affective relationships between individuals in the network. In this description, newly introduced technologies were shaped by their use (and misuse) and subsequently shaped instantiations of the network. Implied and collectively held understanding of specific virtual platforms (such as Facebook groups) and technologies also shaped how, if ever, individuals interacted with one another. FemTechNet participants were not perceived as understanding they were contributing to an archive; it would be unethical, ultimately, to include their contributions, despite the exchanges (on Facebook, for example) taking place on what is often viewed as a “democratic space” and through another lens as “ultimately proprietary.”

New technologies were noted as increasing the playfulness within the network. Highlighted here were .gif parties — a kind of technologically enhanced hanging out. Bluejeans, specifically, was noted for the level of intimate knowledge it facilitated. With video chat, meeting attendees witnessed one another’s body language, modes of speech, and more. One interviewee, in describing the scope of this disclosure, noted seeing “rooms, kids, pets, partners, some of our members at conferences, on buses.” The platform allowed individuals who often had strong affective ties prior to its use within the collective to suddenly encounter one another in lived, though spatially distant, contexts. This level of knowledge, as one interviewee stated, gives “testament to all the things that hadn’t been recorded and couldn’t be recorded”: the necessity of affective absence, of many forms of quiet, in the archive.

The emphasis FemTechNet placed on articulating critical approaches to race brought about an internal, though unrecorded, shift to address racism within the collective. A few of the interviewees mentioned racism and awareness of power dynamics in their reflections on FemTechNet. For some, working against racism heightened their sense of being identified or made more precarious through the archive. For others, the ways that research occurred in the academy were tinged with a denial of post-colonial, third world feminist methodologies. The possibility of using these methodologies in FemTechNet was part of the allure of being a member of the collective. While a collective member described race and racism as “an issue that came up all the time” (especially in relationship to the inclusivity of the network) the manifestation of power and oppression within the collective was rarely brought to the fore by interviewees.

Rather than rupture, interviewees described a long and ongoing process borne out of patience and an awareness of others’ familiarity with specific concepts. In practice, the creation of a public face of FemTechNet involved a process of language shifting, of rewriting and editing documents, and of constantly addressing moments in which power (and oppression) inadvertently were reinserted into FemTechNet materials or processes. There was, and is, an ongoing “conversation across difference” that aims to educate from many points. These difficult, ever-vigilant conversations were described in relation to people of color and third world feminism as well as trans feminisms. The ongoing energy for this work, and its impetus, was notably not described as an outcome of FemTechNet. Instead, it rested in the appeal and the possibilities of the network, which was how “people found people they could work with, found the things they needed.”