“What you cannot get over”: A photographic essay exploring reproductive failure, affect, and information work

Schlesselman-Tarango, Gina; Tarango, Miguel A.

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/106723 Copy

Description

Title

“What you cannot get over”: A photographic essay exploring reproductive failure, affect, and information work

Author(s)

• Schlesselman-Tarango, Gina
• Tarango, Miguel A.

Issue Date

2020

Keyword(s)

• Mixed-media
• Infertility
• Reproductive failures
• Embodiment
• Affect
• Information seeking
• Griefwork

Abstract

This photographic essay explores five mixed-media pieces created from photographs of selections from the author’s Archive of Reproductive Failure. As a series, “What You Cannot Get Over” chronicles the author’s experiences with infertility and pregnancy loss and compels readers to sit with, think about, and take seriously reproductive failures and the attendant labor—affective and information work— involved. Themes addressed include embodiment and information work; affective encounters with others and with information sources; reproductive failure as impediment to information work; information seeking and accumulation; the calling upon and turning from “expertise”; documenting failure and loss; and implications for information organizations and professional practice. Using Scuro’s “griefwork” as a major framing device, “What You Cannot Get Over” validates what is often read as failed or unproductive labor, instead honoring it, rendering it visible and valuable.

Publisher

Johns Hopkins University Press and the Illinois School of Information Sciences, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Series/Report Name or Number

Library Trends 68 (3). Winter 2020

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

Permalink

http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106723

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1353/lib.2020.0008

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2020 Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

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