Milli mála - 2020, Síða 198

198 Milli mála 12/2020
MULTILINGUAL WRITING IN ICELAND

10.33112/millimala.12.7
work of gatekeepers in academic publishing.33 She named editors,
publishers, reviewers, and referees as those in gatekeeping positions.
Since Spender’s work came, much research has been done on gate-
keepers in academic publishing. In the wider field of publishing, the
debate rages about the necessity vs. evil (maybe necessary evil) of
publishing gatekeepers.34
For a broader perspective, the American organization VIDA:
Women in Literary Arts conducts an annual count of gender repre-
sentation in almost forty literary journals and periodicals.35 Volun-
teers across the USA “dedicate thousands of combined hours to per-
form [this] arduous task: we manually, painstakingly tally the gender
disparity in major literary publications and book reviews.” With the
initial results in 2010 obviating that men are published with much
greater frequency, this accounting promulgated nationwide conversa-
tion that has since “affected change in the publishing industry, [and]
has also created a strong community of writers and advocates.” Fol-
lowing VIDA’s lead, Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA) was
formed in 2011 to conduct a count of gender representation in Cana-
dian literary publications, and to “share feminist values and see the
importance of strong and active female perspectives and presences
within the Canadian literary landscape.” The advocacy work of both
VIDA and CWILA offer solid examples of volunteer collectives
whose aims intend to support underrepresented populations through
enabling discussion and action of current gatekeeping within literary
scenes.
Migrant literature, multilingual writing and democracy are,
therefore, aspects that reflect and influence the inclusion of migrants
in receiving societies and challenges literary traditions. Ós Pressan
was, and still is, the only nonprofit in Iceland dealing directly with
intersectional issues of marginalization in literature and the literary
field in the country. The idea of Icelandic literature as pure and ho-
33 See Spender, Dale, “The Gatekeepers: A Feminist Critique of Academic Publishing”, Doing
Feminist Research, ed. Helen Roberts, London: Routledge, 1981, pp. 186–202.
34 Some, such as William Marlen (2016), have looked at how gatekeeper agency can lead to wider
representation, particularly around the emergence of world literature. See William Marling
Gatekeepers: The Emergence of World Literature and the 1960s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016,
doi: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190274146.001.0001.
35 VIDA: Women in Literary Arts. About the VIDA Count, https://www.vidaweb.org/the-count
[accessed April 28, 2020].