Redefining a Movement: The Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales Library

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with political affinities to Riot Grrrl. This is not to suggest, how-

ever, that the researcher, fan, and affinity group member are by 

any means mutually exclusive categories. In fact, both responses 

to news of the collection’s development and the content of the 

collection, which provides further evidence of Riot Grrrl’s intel-

lectual roots, reveal how deeply entangled these categories can 

be and arguably always were in Riot Grrrl. Finally, the dialogue 

generated by news of the collection’s development revealed the 

extent to which the collection, despite its location in an institu-

tional setting, is part of the affective economy in which souve-

nirs, memorabilia, and archival objects circulate. As Ann Cvet-

kovich reminds us, “memories can cohere around objects in 

unpredictable ways.”

24

 In other words, an object’s meaning and 

value are invariably prone to drift, frequently becoming invested 

with attachments previously unimagined by the original pro-

ducer or owner. Although these are the papers of individuals, 

news of the collection was received with enthusiasm because so 

many women feel that these papers represent and belong to an 

entire generation of feminists. This very identification enabled 

the Riot Grrrl Collection to go viral before its contents were 

processed, but this identification or overidentification with Riot 

Grrrl and specifically with key figures may be what the collec-

tion’s development ultimately quells.

Although it seems likely that news of the Riot Grrrl Collection 

traveled as quickly as it did because many women feel a personal 

attachment to the materials the collection does now or will even-

tually house, the collection is defined by and asserts a much more 

narrowly conceived understanding of Riot Grrrl than existing 

collections of Riot Grrrl related materials. If existing collections, 

such as the zine collections at Barnard College and Duke Uni-

versity, have sought to promote an understanding of Riot Grrrl 

as a mass movement of girls and young women that originated 

in the 1990s, the Fales Library collection defines Riot Grrrl as a 

somewhat more temporally, if not geographically, bound move-

ment synonymous with the cultural contributions of a core group 

of women musicians, writers, performers, and visual artists. 

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redefining a movement  /  95

First, the Riot Grrrl Collection at Fales Library spans a specific 

period—1989 to 1996—although the dates are, as Darms acknowl-

edges, “not 100% firm.”

25

 When asked about the temporal bounds 

of the collection, Darms explains that in many respects, 1989 

represents “the intellectual inception” of Riot Grrrl,

26 

because, by 

this time, Hanna and many other women connected to early Riot 

Grrrl activities were already at Evergreen State College and begin-

ning to engage in the conversations that would lay the foundation 

for the movement. Although some materials in the collection, 

such as those related to Hanna’s second band, Le Tigre, postdate 

1996, Darms suggests that by 1996 both Bikini Kill and the Riot 

Grrrl movement were already in decline. Situating the collection 

between 1989 and 1996 is not necessarily inaccurate, but it does 

entrench the idea of Riot Grrrl as a cultural phenomenon that 

happened in a particular place and time and involved a specific 

group of individuals. As a result, rather than the “every girl’s a riot 

girl” mantra that informs collecting policies at other institutions, 

one might conclude that the Fales Library’s Riot Grrrl Collection 

is more explicitly engaged in and committed to canon forma-

tion, albeit not without a healthy dose of self-reflexivity about the 

trouble of canons.

Despite this mandate, which may strike some fans as being 

at odds with Riot Grrrl’s ethos, it is important to recognize that 

the collection’s existence is contingent on longstanding friend-

ships and connections that date back to Riot Grrrl’s inception in 

the early 1990s. As previously mentioned, Darms was a student 

at Evergreen State College in the early 1990s. “I never went to a 

Riot Grrrl meeting,” she explains, “But I was there and involved 

and doing the same things. . . . I wasn’t close friends with all the 

donors, but mostly, we were at least in the same places, at the 

same shows, at the same parties.”

27

 Perhaps more important, 

however, is Darms’s present connection to the women she first 

met at Olympia in the early 1990s. As emphasized, the wide-

spread interest in the collection has been generated in part by 

the personal attachment so many women feel to the collection’s 

materials. The collection arguably only exists, however, because 

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96  /  redefining a movement

the donors and archivists identify with and trust each other on 

the basis of their much less public history. Nevertheless, when I 

asked Darms about the importance of her personal connection 

to the donors, she initially hesitated to admit to its centrality in 

the collection’s development:

KE: It seems to me that this collection would simply not exist 

if you weren’t friends or at least acquaintances with many 

of the donors.

LD: I’m not sure. Maybe it wouldn’t exist at this time. Marvin 

Taylor, the Director of the Downtown Collection, is excited 

about the materials and had some knowledge of them . . . but 

no, you’re right, the collection wouldn’t exist yet.

28

Later in the interview, Darms admitted, “I personally don’t have 

a problem with my personal relationship to my donors, but I’m 

concerned and keep waiting for someone else to have a problem 

with it.”

29

 When asked to elaborate, she added: “Although a lot 

of curators and archivists probably have a personal relation-

ship to their donors and that is pretty standard, I still worry. 

There is no money exchanging hands and there is nothing that 

benefits me personally, so I’m not sure why I’m worried.”

30

 I 

wondered whether Darms was concerned about finding a way 

to rationalize how friendship and affective ties might play a 

central role in her professional work, but, as the discussion pro-

gressed, it became apparent that her lingering concerns may be 

more directly rooted in her own disciplinary training: “I’m also 

trained as a historian and maybe that’s part of it too—a desire to 

remain objective?”

31

 By the end of our exchange on this topic (in 

which she had initially rejected the idea that friendship might 

not only matter but be integral), Darms stated, “I truly believe 

that my relationship to the donors, my friendships, the fact that 

I was in Olympia when all this stuff was going on, puts me in a 

better position to build this collection.”

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If Darms was initially hesitant to acknowledge the importance 

of her personal connection to the donors, her donors were entirely 

forthcoming about the essential role their connection to Darms 

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