craft, thesis, update
16 05 2006I just can’t seem to avoid the craft at the moment.
Current thesis word count: 24,017
The refusal at work in these DIY communities is not only a refusal of the affluent Western individual’s interpelletation as the consumer of inauthentic, technologised and mass-produced artifacts; it is also avowedly a recuperation of everyday domestic labour and productive leisure - knitting, sewing - from their undervalued status in contemporary regimes of cultural value. However, these practices are very often recuperated for hipness via the (sometimes post-feminist) differentiation of ‘indie craft’ from the middlebrow aesthetic of the mainstream ‘craft store’.
Have you read “Slackspace: The Politics of Waste?”
Quick summary here that might show why the issues you span in your blog hit so close to home for us.