Three and a half years ago, when we just moved to London, I went through my papers from the Master's. I organised them in different folders. On one of those I wrote: PHOTOCOPIES - THROW AWAY in EMERGENCY. I was thinking that if and when we get evicted, there's no point carrying them around, as much as I liked them, they'll just weigh me down.

Now, some seven evictions later and god knows how many house moves, I looked through that folder again. it had my favourite articles from the Historiography class. I flipped through one of them, Joan W. Scott's "The Evidence of Experience". I had marked some words such as 'agency', 'historicizing' and 'essentializing', and had written next to them: 'what is this, some kind of academic jargon?'

Now, hours before another house move, I found the courage to threw them away. I kept only one, another classic Scott article, 'Gender: a useful category of Historical Analysis'. All the rest have to go. It's never too late to give freedom to your beloved possessions.