Feminisms,women’s histories and heritage in ‘inner city’ London and Paris

Abstract

Despite being stigmatised and racialised during the latter half of the twentieth century, the ‘inner city’ in London and quartier populaire in Paris also became known for resistance, conviviality and possibility. These aspects are now being remembered in varied public forms, from murals to museums, archives to monuments. This article has two aims. First, to outline examples of curatorial activism and the heritagisation of feminism/s and women’s histories in Brixton, London and la Goutte d’Or, Paris, using qualitative data. Second, to compare and critically analyse how these examples differently contribute to feminist praxis and a more democratic, egalitarian public culture in cities. Our argument is that the inner city is becoming an important site for curatorial activism and the heritagisation of black and Maghrebi women’s histories and intersectional feminisms. Whilst these interventions expand the urban public sphere and constitute a claim to narrate and represent the history of the city, they are also entangled with ambivalences of control related to governance, culture-led urban regeneration, location and permanence. As such, we identify a plurality of heritage gazes, ranging from those that are true to the curatorial activism of feminists; to a gaze premised upon a more general valorisation of the authenticity of the inner city; from heritage gazes that promote diversity but not racial identities and/or politics; to communities who refute the very proposition of Western metropolitan heritage.