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Narrating complex identities: Contemporary women and craft
Women's Studies International Forum 47 (2014) 56–62
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Narrating complex identities: Contemporary women and craft Marty Grace ⁎, Enza Gandolfo College of Arts, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne 8001, Australia
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s y n o p s i s Personal narratives incorporating ambivalence, ambiguity and inconsistences reflect the fluidity and complexities of contemporary identities. Based on the authors' original narrative research exploring what craftmaking means to women, this paper focuses on the ways that three contemporary Australian women narrate their identities as amateur craftswomen. While craft has had some resurgence in popularity in recent years, the research participants experienced subtle pressures, both internal and external, to subdue their passion for craftmaking. The research participants located themselves not as identified subjects within dominant discourses, but rather referred to the discourse/s in order to position themselves by the actions of critique, resistance and subversion. Postmodern theorists suggest that contemporary identity construction is an internal project of the self, or is socially developed in interaction with other people. We suggest that contemporary craftswomen's identities are constructed, internally, socially, and in embodied interaction with the material world. Crown Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction In recent years we have seen a resurgence in the popularity of craftmaking, including among young women (Stannard, 2011). While craftmaking, especially textile and fibre crafts such as knitting, crochet and quilting continues to be practised by individual women in their homes as part of their leisure time, the contemporary profile includes participation through groups like Stitch ‘n’ Bitch (Minahan & Cox, 2007), through craftivism movements which use craft to make political statements (Hackney, 2013), and through the increasing opportunities for craftmakers to sell their handmade objects at markets and through online sites such as Etsy. However women's craftmaking has a long and sometimes controversial history and even in the midst of this resurgence, a more traditional view of craft persists, associating it with the domestic, as a ‘time filler’ and therefore in opposition to the imagined preoccupations of the ‘contemporary woman’ (Stannard, 2011; Turney, 2004). This article draws on the authors' original research to explore how contemporary amateur craftswomen narrate the complexities of their identities as craftswomen. As Andrews, Squire, and ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Grace).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.010 0277-5395/Crown Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tamboukou (2008) suggest, narrative research enables us ‘to see different and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning, to bring them into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’ (Andrews et al., 2008: 1).
Identity Focussing on identity is like trying to capture the movement of the ocean in a static image such as a painting or photograph. Different scholarly disciplines – psychology, social theory, cultural studies and feminism – have different perspectives on identity. Although elusive there is a general agreement that identity is an important concept, that contemporary understandings have shifted from a view of identity as static and fixed to identity as fluid and contingent, and that how people experience and express their identities is complex. In this paper, while acknowledging the contribution of other disciplines, we focus mainly on social, cultural, and feminist theory that links ideas about identity and identity formation with broader social conditions including globalisation and individualisation. According to Elliot and du Gay (2009), the
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postmodernism of the late twentieth century has significantly influenced social science conceptions of identity: Postmodernity, at least in terms of identity, involves the deconstruction and reconstruction of the self as fluid, fragmented, discontinuous, decentred, dispersed, culturally eclectic, hybrid-like. … Identity, in the post-traditional world of the postmodern, becomes principally performative— depthless, playful, ironic, just a plurality of selves, scripts, discourses and desires. (Elliot & du Gay, 2009: xii) While not all contemporary theorists see identity as entirely superficial, performative and transient, there is a general agreement that identities are less fixed than they were considered to be in past times. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) sees us as the do-it-yourself biographers of our own identities rather than identifying with pre-existing cultural prescriptions. Similarly, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1996) contrast the contemporary pre-occupation regarding self-definition with the pre-determined roles available to people in the past. Identity development is no longer a question of choosing from established, culturally available roles, but has become an ongoing process of self-invention. Identity politics based on collective identities have given way to individual life politics of identity construction, negotiation and assertion (Bauman, 2000). Identity is no longer a given but a task. Beck and BeckGernsheim (1996) link this pressure to constitute ourselves as individuals with ‘new individualism’: Opportunities, dangers and biographical uncertainties that were earlier pre-defined within the family association, the village community, or by recourse to the rules of social estates or classes, must now be perceived, interpreted, decided on and processed by individuals themselves. (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1996:17) Elliot and du Gay (2009: xvi) suggest that ‘[f]or those enticed by the new individualism, the danger of selfreinvention is a form of change so rapid and complete that identity becomes disposable. Instead of finding ourselves, we lose ourselves.’ Feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti, acknowledging the fluidity of contemporary identities, focuses less on individualism and more on connection, both social and genealogical. She writes: ‘Identity for me is a play of multiple, fractured aspects of the self; it is relational, in that it requires a bond to the ‘other’; it is retrospective, in that it is fixed through memories and recollections, in the genealogical process’ (Braidotti, 1994: 166). Thus for Braidotti, identity may be a contemporary project of the self, but it is a self in context, in social relation with the people around oneself in the present, as well as the remembered self and the recollected influences of the past. In Briadotti's view identity is not always rational or conscious. While we have agency and can construct our own identities to an extent, identity is constrained by personal experiences, interaction with the material and social world, culturally available options, and structures such as gender, race, and class. At the social level, identification with other people creates recognisable inter-subjective or social identities such as ‘craftswoman’ or ‘quilter’. At a cultural level, individuals and groups identify with or juxtapose themselves in relation to cultural narratives of particular identities.
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Like Braidotti (1994) we understand that identities are not constructed in social isolation. It is cultural discourses that provide the context for individuals' construction and understanding of identities, whether by adoption, adaptation or rejection of identities that exist, albeit in a fluid and flexible way, in cultural discourses. As Joseph states, in discussing the negotiated identities of Malaysian migrant women in Australia, ‘identities are simultaneously shaped by, and help shape, discourses’ (2013:35). Like all cultural discourses, the discourses around craft and craftmaking shift and change over time and in different parts of the community. Parker (1984) and Isaacs (1987) are among a number of scholars who have documented aspects of the long history of women's craft and craftmaking. Both Parker and Issacs illustrated the range of craftwork undertaken both by poor women who ‘had no alternative but to make the things they needed, who often recycled materials including flour sacks and sugar bags; and those women who had more time and resources to spend on their craft… [including both] the purely functional and the highly decorative’ (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010: 10). The increasing availability of manufactured goods, alongside the increasing numbers of women in the paid workforce in industrialised countries like Australia, has reduced the necessity for making household items at home. However, craft and craftmaking have not disappeared. The current popularity of craft can be seen in the increase in craft groups such as Stitch 'n Bitch, the rise of DIY and use of craft as a form of activism (yarn bombing and graffiti knitting) and in the proliferation of craft blogs and websites. This resurgence has been attributed to various factors including the ‘rejection of the consumer culture’ that has led to a re-valuing of handmade objects, driven by movements like the ‘slow’ movements that often have environmental and ethical concerns (Collier, 2011: 104), health and wellbeing benefits (Gandolfo & Grace, 2009, 2010) and the reclaiming of craft practices by feminists. Feminism has had a complex relationship with craft, certainly some second wave feminists who wanted to free women from the domestic sphere and create opportunities for them to pursue an education and professional work, rejected craft. However, other feminists such as the artist Judy Chicago who used a range of textile crafts in her installation The Dinner Party (1970s), a political work that challenged the omission of women from history, have argued for and continue to argue for the importance of valuing craft and craftmaking practices. While some women are gathering together and knitting to protest against war or the lack of action on climate change, and others are taking up quilting or sewing to help them relax, as an avenue for creative expression, it appears that at least in some sections of the community the old discourses persist—ideas about craft as a ‘timefiller’ activity for women with nothing much to do and therefore necessarily anti-feminist. As Betsy Hosegood writes in her article, ‘Not Tonight Darling, I’m Knitting’: ‘Over and over again women who knit wrestle with their positions in society as either feminists or homemakers’ (Hosegood, 2009:157). Contemporary craftswomen experience their identities within this ambiguous, contested space. The study The Everyday creativity of women craftmakers was a narrative research project funded by Spotlight Pty Ltd and Victoria
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University, and undertaken by the authors. The purpose of the research was to explore, from the perspectives of amateur craftswomen, what craftmaking means to women, and any links they perceived between their craftmaking and their wellbeing. For the research, we filmed interviews with 15 amateur craftswomen in their homes. The women were recruited with the help of Spotlight, a major Australian retailer of fabrics and craft supplies, through a targeted call for expressions of interest to their VIP customers. We specifically recruited women who undertook at least 4 or 5 hours of craftwork per week but considered their craftwork a ‘hobby’ and not a professional activity. We included women of different ages and from different cultural backgrounds, and women undertaking a range of different craft activities, for example knitting, quilting, mosaics, quilling and wool embroidery. Each interview started with a guided tour of the woman's craftwork. The discussions that started during the tour flowed into the interviews, providing an opportunity to explore in detail the complex and varied roles and meanings that craftmaking has in these women's lives. As well as asking the women some general questions about the roles and meanings of craftmaking in their lives and the links with wellbeing, we asked each woman about the genesis of her interest in craftmaking, her past and current engagement with craft, and particularly significant pieces. Photo 1. Participants meet for the first time at the ‘it keeps me sane exhibition’. (Photographer—Maurice Grant-Drew).
The interviews were transcribed and the authors undertook thematic narrative analysis of the data as described by Riessman (2008). The findings were communicated in an exhibition of the women's craftworks and the production of a short film as well as scholarly publications based on the research (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010, 2009; Grace, Gandolfo, & Candy, 2009). The major themes of creative expression, wellbeing, intergenerational and familial connection, giving, social and community connection, identity, and pleasure, joy and love of making are discussed in previous publications. However, during the main data analysis, we identified three participants who told what Georgakopoulou (2007) would call ‘small stories’ of ambivalence and fluidity regarding their identities as craftmakers. We undertook further analysis of these three interviews in order to explore a new research question: How do contemporary amateur craftswomen narrate complexity and ambivalence in their identities? The findings of this analysis could form the basis for further, more extensive and focussed research on this topic.
Findings As participants told us their stories about learning craftmaking skills, about the making of particular craft pieces and of other people's responses to their work, they expressed fluid, shifting and complex identities as craftswomen. Their stories illustrated the ambiguity and ambivalence they experience in constructing and performing their identities in relation to cultural and historical discourses around craft and craftmaking. The act of participating in the research prompted the women to reflect on their identities as craftswomen, in some cases for the first time, and in the act of responding to our questions and requests for narratives, they performed and to some extent reconstructed their identities as craftswomen. The research not only documented the women's perspectives and narratives, but influenced their perceptions of craftmaking as a valued activity— worthy of academic research. While all of the participants talked about the meaning of craft to the them and how they combined it into their lives alongside other roles and responsibilities as mothers, as aunts, as professional women, the three women we have chosen to focus on in this article talked more directly about the way that craft and craftmaking challenged other aspects of their identity. The three participants we are discussing in this article expressed their passion and love for craftmaking, along with their awareness of broader discourses that devalue craftmaking as an identity. One of the participants, Jenny, is a retired professional woman. She identifies as a feminist and deliberately addresses feminist concerns that craft may lead to the ‘dumbing down of women’. The second participant, Amanda, is a young woman. Amanda refers to popular culture and media references to craftmakers as ‘freaks’ and as ‘nannas’ in her narrative. The third participant is Trish. She works full time in a busy research position at a Melbourne university. When Trish first arrived in Australia from Ireland, she felt like an ‘outsider’. While there may have been other factors that identified her as a migrant, she felt it was her craft work, and the fact that she often wore hand knitted outfits, that set her apart as an outsider. In response, she stopped knitting. However, she soon realised that knitting is an integral part of who she is and she took it up again. During the interviews all three women, often with humour, acknowledged the ambiguities and contradictions in their own stories and identities. Photo 2. Amanda Smith's jewellery. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien).
Amanda is a young woman, a prolific, very skilled maker of clothes, jewellery, cross stitches, toys and cushions. She begins her interview with a story about being taught to sew as a child: Amanda: I started to sew when my Nanna got me a little Strawberry Shortcake sewing machine, where you turn the
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handle and the needle goes up and down. I was about three or four. She gave me her scraps and I was free to do whatever I wanted with them. I was free to use Nanna's good sewing scissors, while she was in the room. Mum showed me how to make a sleeve pattern and a tuxedo for my doll. They encouraged me and taught me things. I think that's why I don't need patterns, because they showed me the basic shapes and I figured it out from there. A number of the women told versions of this story, demonstrating that the transfer of skills from mother to daughter, from grandmother to granddaughter, is relatively common among the craftswomen (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010). Following this story, Amanda tells various other stories about the different craftworks she has made. Most of these – clothes, wedding bags, and jewellery – create a sense of a young contemporary woman who loves fashion, dressing up and spending time with her girlfriends. In the following segment of her interview, Amanda refers to one of the dominant discourses about craftmakers, as being obsessive:
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By the end of the interview she has come to claim that identity ‘all us freaks’ and to include herself in it. For her, the process of volunteering for the research and preparing for the interview prompted her to review her ideas about her own identity. She does craft because it is an integral part of the day-today flow of her life, not to fulfil some idea of herself, but when she realises that it is such an important part of her life, she acknowledges it as part of her identity. She is also aware that her narrative, the one she is telling us, and the one she has entrusted us to tell, will show the ‘other side of all us freaks’ and in that way contest and challenge those very discourses of crafts and craftswomen. Photo 3. Jenny Chantry's quilts. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien).
Amanda: Look, when I first heard about this whole idea I just envisaged these people who have their whole house covered in patchwork or their whole house is all crossstitched. I thought that's the kind of people you'd be looking for, I didn't think that you'd want to speak to me. However, in her preparation for the research she realises something about herself in relation to this view of craftmakers: Amanda: But … when I was looking for things to show you, I realised that my house was filled with stuff that I make and I am that freak. And I didn't think I was, but I am. And that's okay I think. I don't think I am taking it too far. Not for now anyway. You never know, I might change in the future. And then later towards the end of the interview: Amanda: I think it's nice that you're doing this, cause it made me think about craft not, like a lot of people think craft activities are for therapeutic reasons or they're for nannas. It's interesting when people find out I do a lot of sewing and I've done a lot of craft, they just don't get it because I'm not a nanna or I don't need to do basket weaving or something to keep my sanity. It's like, I'm not what they think in their brain about somebody who would be doing craft. So I think it's good that you're doing this to see the other side [of] all us freaks. [laughs] Amanda is clearly aware that there are particular cultural discourses about craft and craftswomen. They situate craft as something done by older women, nannas and people who need therapy, ‘craft freaks’ whose homes are covered in patchwork and cross-stitch. In her narrative she makes clear that she is not that sort of craftswoman. We are in her house, and she is showing us around; it is not a cross-stitched house. However, the sewing machine takes up a central space in the lounge room and some people, she tells us, including her husband see her as a ‘sewing freak’. She is clearly not old or in the need of therapy but she does believe that ‘it's time out…[and] it does keep me a little bit sane.’
Jenny started making quilts after she retired. She took up making quilts from vintage and contemporary Japanese fabrics, almost by ‘accident’: Jenny: Well I didn't think I was making craft to start with. I had on our bed a commercial quilt that I'd bought, or an over the top throw. And it was looking a bit the worse for wear and I thought I couldn't find another one and I would make it. I bought fabric and I bought everything; the fabric I liked for the top and bottom, and it was an absolute disaster. I didn't realise that when you do thick stuff you have to have a special machine piece to run it through. So it was a disaster and I threw it away. But I actually found, in the process of doing that, a quilting shop. I'd never, ever, ever in my life, noticed a quilting shop. Now whether that was because I was too busy at work, wasn't looking, but I was just absolutely intrigued with fabric. I just wanted to do something with fabric. And I just started to be interested, found out, asked a few more questions … Also I was given some Japanese furniture for a present and I love Japanese things, so I don't know, I just fell into it. I was out one day looking at Japanese furniture. They had kimonos, I thought
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Kimonos—quilts, why can't you do that, sounds like a good idea, and just went from there. Jenny's story of discovering quiltmaking has some of the flavour of a love story, falling in love with quiltmaking surprised Jenny, but her love for this craft work has been long and sustaining:
She is quite prepared to live with the tensions between her feminism and her craft making, with no great pressure to resolve any contradiction. Photo 4. Trish O'Connor's necklace. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien and Monica Liu).
Jenny: I just love it. I love going to shops, buying stuff. I love looking. I love the travel around it. I love websites. I love Op shops for books. Everywhere I go, I find it's quite interesting because in the back of my mind, I've always got these ideas about where I would use it… I love the feel of them. I love the look of them. I love giving them to people. I tell them they don't need to have them out every time I come to visit them because that's an unfair thing to expect. It's touched something in me, really a very basic thing that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. It has become a major interest and occupation in her life. In the following segment from her interview she refers to a second wave feminist discourse that condemned craft work as a time wasting, dumbing down of women. In her interview she discusses a tussle between her feminist sensibility and her desire for her craft: Jenny: … right at the beginning – and I don't give two hoots now, coming from the sort of background of work – I went to quilting classes and I was horrified at the perfectionism people are striving for. And I thought ‘How could anybody spend their life trying to get equal sized stitches across a quilt?. That this is the dumbing down of women.’ I was really taken by that. I thought, ‘This is shocking!’ All my political sensitivities and all my feminism went ‘This is wrong. This is wrong!’ And to an extent there's a little bit of that, that nags me, that says if you lost contact with it, you could easily lose contact with reality in a way. And that it could be the dumbing down of women. So I've had this sort of tussle in my head about, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, you know? But I just get carried away with it so it doesn't matter. It's just enjoyable and life goes on and so on. Jenny previously worked in very senior corporate and government positions and is still involved in a number of political and feminist networks. In response to Marty's question: ‘Is there anything you’re afraid of with the quilt making?’, it is her perception of the second wave feminist view of craftmaking that she refers to. She establishes here her identity as a feminist: ‘All my political sensitivities and all my feminism went: This is wrong. This is wrong!’ But she lives and is prepared to live with these contradictions: ‘So I've had this sort of tussle in my head about, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, you know? But I just get carried away with it so it doesn't matter. It's just enjoyable and life goes on and so on.’ Jenny lives with the contradictions because craft brings her joy. In other parts of her interview she reflects on the time in her life when she first started quilting, saying she was ‘just like a kid in a lolly shop’ and that she would wake early and leap out of bed each morning because she could not wait to get her hands on her fabrics. What she says about her engagement with craft shows that her identity is not fixed, resolved, tidy.
Trish grew up in Ireland. Her first experience of knitting was in primary school but it wasn't until she was taught to knit by her grandmother when she was in her 20s that she developed a passion for it. Early on in the interview she tells this story of making her wedding dress: Trish: We had been secretly planning to get married and move to Canada. I had just left university and I had only had one pay cheque. We had no budget for an expensive wedding. I had seen this pattern in a magazine. It was a seriously ugly dress. When I told my sister I'd got engaged and I was going to make my wedding dress, her first reaction was, ‘Not that ugly thing you've seen in the magazine?’ It was like a vest and had big bulky sleeves on it. It was shocking. But I loved the pattern and I saw the potential in it. It was really fun to knit. But when I was halfway through the skirt and I realised I'd run out of wool. I didn't have enough wool to finish it. I was thinking, this was going to be a strapless number for the wedding. I actually had to ring just about every wool shop in Dublin and I finally found enough balls to complete it. That was major panic. And then it needed to have pearl buttons down the front of it. It took my Mum three hours to get twelve buttons straight on it. And my friend, I think she was eighty-two at the time, she was blind in one eye from shingles and she did all the crochet work around the neck and cuffs, because I couldn't crochet at the time. It represented so many people's work and it's full of funny stories. My aunt washed it and it took a week for it to dry. I was getting married on Thursday and two days before, the dog jumped on it and covered it in mud. The dog was very lucky he was alive. That dress is imbued with so many different stories and memories for me. Following this story Trish talks about her love and passion for knitting. She knits most days because, she says, ‘if it's not in my day, it's a bad day.’ When Trish first arrived in Australia she gave up knitting: Trish: …because I felt I was too different. The clothes I was wearing marked me as an outsider and there weren't people just sitting around the place knitting. So I gave it up for quite a few years but I really missed it. Then I said, ‘No,
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knitting is an integral part of who I am, so I had to go back to it.’ I ended up going back to it, I couldn't resist it. Trish goes on to say that as knitting became more popular in Australia it became easier for her to continue but she had already made the decision that it was so much part of who she is that she would not be able to do without it. In the rest of the interview she tells us a number of stories of how she has created craft and knitting communities around her: she has a knitting group on the train, a craft group at work, and she belongs to a local Stitch 'n Bitch group. Clearly belonging is important to Trish's identity and so is knitting. When Trish could no longer resist her passion for knitting and reembraced it, she resolved her anxiety about belonging by finding or creating groups that share and value the craftmaker identity. Discussion We have touched on some of the ways the women through their narratives explored their identity as craftswomen, and how that identity interacts with other aspects of their identities as feminists, young women, professionals, and migrants. For us the focus on the ways women actively use the cultural discourses to position themselves within their own narratives makes visible the complexities of their identities. Amanda admits to being a ‘freak’ but not a nanna or someone in need of therapy. Jenny feels a tension between feminism and craftmaking, but puts it aside because of her love for her craft. Trish gave up knitting because she felt it positioned her as an ‘outsider’, but subsequently found a way to have both—her identity as a knitter and her sense of belonging. The women position themselves as active agents in these narratives. They express themselves creatively and derive satisfaction from the joy and pleasure of craftmaking. They are not only willing to live with the ambiguity and paradoxes, but rather they take pleasure from the subversiveness of being who they are rather than conforming to the stereotypes of what others may expect. Our participants do not to locate themselves as identified subjects within dominant discourses, but rather refer to the discourse/s in order to position themselves by the actions of critique, resistance and subversion. Often to nominate what they are not. Amanda, Jenny and Trish came to craftmaking in quite different ways from each other. Amanda grew up in a household where sewing was taken for granted. Fabrics, the good dressmaking scissors, and making clothes were part of her environment. Playing with her dolls included making clothes for them. Jenny, on the other hand, attempted her first quilt as a retired career woman, with an optimistic if somewhat misplaced confidence in her ability to do something that she had never done before. Her subsequent love affair with quilting, in particular making beautifully original quilts from vintage and contemporary Japanese fabrics, was inspired by the aesthetics, and carried along by her confidence in her ability to learn new techniques to make things by hand. Trish took up knitting as a young woman and launched into large and complex projects including knitting her own wedding dress. For Trish, knitting is part of her everyday life. Our research focussed on individual women's stories and their reflections regarding what craftmaking means to them. It became clear that their craftmaking was inspired by their own
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desire for creative expression, and the joy they derive from expressing their creativity through handmade objects that are beautiful, useful, and can be given as gifts and appreciated by other people. It also became clear that their identities are connected with cultural discourses concerning craftmaking, and are socially connected with other craftmakers. These connections may be ironic, juxtaposed, self-consciously discontinuous, or simply enthusiastic. Amanda's claim that ‘I am that freak’ was ironic and humorous. Jenny's acceptance of the traces of feminist ambivalence in her love affair with quilt making was defiant and proud. Trish's acknowledgement that knitting, even if it marks her as an outsider, is an integral part of identity led her to seek out other craftswomen and to create her own ‘communities’ to which she could belong. She set up a Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group in her suburb and formed small knitting groups on the train and at work. Perhaps this was made easier for Trish over time as she became more secure in her new environment, perhaps when she became aware of other knitters and crafters lurking in subcultures around her, but in her narrative the focus is on her realisation that knitting is part of her identity and a desire to reclaim it. During the research, the participants became increasingly curious about each other, and eager to meet, illustrating Braidotti's (1994) notions of the relational and social contextual aspects of identity. For the women, a new aspect of identity was created by their participation in this particular research, and they wanted to find and connect with the other people who shared that identity. Their opportunity came at the exhibition of their works that was held as part of the research. Stories, like works of art, communicate beyond words. Often rich in symbols, metaphor, and humour, they express complex layers of meaning in ways that cannot be captured by the rationally-based responses typical of conventional social research. Narratives by their very nature contain ambivalence, ambiguity and inconsistences that allow for and reflect the fluidity and complexities of contemporary identities; they create a space in which the nuances of lived experience can be communicated. The concept of identity is complex. As soon as we focus on one aspect, for example self-expression, another aspect such as interpersonal connection demands our attention. This research adds to the understanding of identity construction—not just as an internal project of the self, not just as socially constructed, but also constructed in embodied interaction with the material world. The narratives of our research participants capture and communicate the playfulness and ambiguity of how they experience their own identities as craftswomen. Their participation in the research constituted a performance of those identities. Living in postmodern times gives them a freedom of self expression, even self-invention as Bauman (2000) suggests. However, they do not communicate the kind of individualism that Elliot and du Gay (2009) describe. This is a socially connected practice, sometimes with tension between self expression and social connection. Their narratives are replete with references to interpersonal connectedness—Amanda's genealogical connection with her mother and grandmother, Trish's connections with her craft groups, and Jenny's connection with other quilters at classes. This relational aspect resonates with Braidotti's discussion of identity. There is a strong theme of self expression, in embodied interaction with the material world.
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Conclusion
References
This small preliminary research project illustrates that, for the contemporary women who contributed to this research, their ‘craftswoman’ identity is no longer a conforming performance of a culturally approved female identity, but an urgent self-expression, a claiming of something integral, joyful and somewhat subversive. It is an identity performed through their embodied, material practices, and their products linger in the environment, communicating some of the subtlety and complexity, but also the simplicity and groundedness of their identities. The expression of creativity speaks of a desire to be recognised as unique individuals, but at the same time to remain recognisable as valid human beings, distinctive but recognisable. Misrecognition—being stereotyped because of some characteristic, is a painful experience, but is more than balanced by the joy of connected recognition when people meet and recognise someone like themselves. This research supports some of the contemporary ideas about identity, and adds the idea that people can reasonably comfortably accommodate ambiguity and contradiction in their understandings of themselves, seeing these aspects as playful, ironic, fun, and interesting, not necessarily as matters to be resolved.
Andrews, Molly, Squire, Corinne, & Tamboukou, Maria (Eds.). (2008). Doing narrative research. London: Sage. Bauman, Zygmunt. (2000). Identity in the globalizing world. In Zygmunt Bauman, The individualized society. Polity Press, re-published in Anthony Elliot and Paul du Gay (Eds.) 2009, Identity in question, London: Sage Beck, Ulrich and Beck-Gernsheim, Elisabeth. (1996). Losing the traditional: individualization and “precarious freedoms”. In Paul Heelas, Scott Lash, and Paul Morris (Eds.) Detraditionalization. Blackwell. Republished in Anthony Elliot and Paul du Gay (Eds.) 2009, Identity in question. London: Sage Braidotti, Rosi (1994). Nomadic subjects; embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press. Collier, Ann Futterm (2011). The well-being of women who create with textiles: Implications for art therapy. Art Therapy, 28.3, 104–112. Elliot, Anthony, & du Gay, Paul (Eds.). (2009). Identity in question. London: Sage. Gandolfo, Enza, & Grace, Marty (2009). …it keeps me sane …women craft wellbeing. Melbourne: Vulgar Press. Gandolfo, Enza, & Grace, Marty (2010). Women doing it forever: The everyday creativity of women craftmakers. ANZJAT: The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Art Therapy, 5, 29–43. Georgakopoulou, Alexandra (2007). Thinking big with small stories in narrative and identity analysis. In M. Bamberg (Ed.), Narrative—State of the art (pp. 145–154). Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Grace, Marty, Gandolfo, Enza, & Candy, Chelsea (2009). Crafting quality of life: Creativity and wellbeing. Journal of the Association for Research on Mothering, 9(11.1), 239–250. Hackney, Fiona (2013). Quiet activism and the new amateur: The power of home and hobby crafts. Design and Culture, 5(2), 169–193. Hosegood, Betsy (2009). Not tonight darling, I'm knitting. Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture., 7(2), 148–163. Isaacs, Jennifer (1987). The gentle arts: 200 years of Australian women's domestic and decorative arts. Brisbane: Lansdowne Press. Joseph, Cynthia (2013). (Re)negotiating cultural and work identities pre and post-migration: Malaysian migrant women in Australia. Women's Studies International Forum, 36, 27–36. Minahan, Stella, & Cox, Julie Wolfram (2007). Stitch 'n Bitch: Cyberfeminism, a third place and the new materiality. Journal of Material Culture, 12(1), p5–p21. Parker, Rozsika (1984). The subversive stitch: Embroidery and the making of the feminine. London: Women's Press. Riessman, Catherine Kohler (2008). Narrative methods for the human sciences. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage. Stannard, Casey Rhea (2011). Motivations for participation in knitting among young women. (PhD diss.). Colorado State University. Turney, Jo (2004). Here's one I made earlier: Making and living with home craft in contemporary Britain. Journal of Design History, 17(3), 267–281.
Ethics This research was approved by the Victoria University Human Research Ethics Committee, Approval HRETH07/126 and the participants consented to being identified and the use of photographs of them and their work being used in the reporting of this research. Acknowledgements Spotlight Pty Ltd, Australia and Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia funded this research.
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Women's Studies International Forum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wsif
Narrating complex identities: Contemporary women and craft Marty Grace ⁎, Enza Gandolfo College of Arts, Victoria University, PO Box 14428, Melbourne 8001, Australia
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s y n o p s i s Personal narratives incorporating ambivalence, ambiguity and inconsistences reflect the fluidity and complexities of contemporary identities. Based on the authors' original narrative research exploring what craftmaking means to women, this paper focuses on the ways that three contemporary Australian women narrate their identities as amateur craftswomen. While craft has had some resurgence in popularity in recent years, the research participants experienced subtle pressures, both internal and external, to subdue their passion for craftmaking. The research participants located themselves not as identified subjects within dominant discourses, but rather referred to the discourse/s in order to position themselves by the actions of critique, resistance and subversion. Postmodern theorists suggest that contemporary identity construction is an internal project of the self, or is socially developed in interaction with other people. We suggest that contemporary craftswomen's identities are constructed, internally, socially, and in embodied interaction with the material world. Crown Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Introduction In recent years we have seen a resurgence in the popularity of craftmaking, including among young women (Stannard, 2011). While craftmaking, especially textile and fibre crafts such as knitting, crochet and quilting continues to be practised by individual women in their homes as part of their leisure time, the contemporary profile includes participation through groups like Stitch ‘n’ Bitch (Minahan & Cox, 2007), through craftivism movements which use craft to make political statements (Hackney, 2013), and through the increasing opportunities for craftmakers to sell their handmade objects at markets and through online sites such as Etsy. However women's craftmaking has a long and sometimes controversial history and even in the midst of this resurgence, a more traditional view of craft persists, associating it with the domestic, as a ‘time filler’ and therefore in opposition to the imagined preoccupations of the ‘contemporary woman’ (Stannard, 2011; Turney, 2004). This article draws on the authors' original research to explore how contemporary amateur craftswomen narrate the complexities of their identities as craftswomen. As Andrews, Squire, and ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Grace).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2014.07.010 0277-5395/Crown Copyright © 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tamboukou (2008) suggest, narrative research enables us ‘to see different and sometimes contradictory layers of meaning, to bring them into useful dialogue with each other, and to understand more about individual and social change’ (Andrews et al., 2008: 1).
Identity Focussing on identity is like trying to capture the movement of the ocean in a static image such as a painting or photograph. Different scholarly disciplines – psychology, social theory, cultural studies and feminism – have different perspectives on identity. Although elusive there is a general agreement that identity is an important concept, that contemporary understandings have shifted from a view of identity as static and fixed to identity as fluid and contingent, and that how people experience and express their identities is complex. In this paper, while acknowledging the contribution of other disciplines, we focus mainly on social, cultural, and feminist theory that links ideas about identity and identity formation with broader social conditions including globalisation and individualisation. According to Elliot and du Gay (2009), the
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postmodernism of the late twentieth century has significantly influenced social science conceptions of identity: Postmodernity, at least in terms of identity, involves the deconstruction and reconstruction of the self as fluid, fragmented, discontinuous, decentred, dispersed, culturally eclectic, hybrid-like. … Identity, in the post-traditional world of the postmodern, becomes principally performative— depthless, playful, ironic, just a plurality of selves, scripts, discourses and desires. (Elliot & du Gay, 2009: xii) While not all contemporary theorists see identity as entirely superficial, performative and transient, there is a general agreement that identities are less fixed than they were considered to be in past times. Zygmunt Bauman (2000) sees us as the do-it-yourself biographers of our own identities rather than identifying with pre-existing cultural prescriptions. Similarly, Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (1996) contrast the contemporary pre-occupation regarding self-definition with the pre-determined roles available to people in the past. Identity development is no longer a question of choosing from established, culturally available roles, but has become an ongoing process of self-invention. Identity politics based on collective identities have given way to individual life politics of identity construction, negotiation and assertion (Bauman, 2000). Identity is no longer a given but a task. Beck and BeckGernsheim (1996) link this pressure to constitute ourselves as individuals with ‘new individualism’: Opportunities, dangers and biographical uncertainties that were earlier pre-defined within the family association, the village community, or by recourse to the rules of social estates or classes, must now be perceived, interpreted, decided on and processed by individuals themselves. (Beck & Beck-Gernsheim, 1996:17) Elliot and du Gay (2009: xvi) suggest that ‘[f]or those enticed by the new individualism, the danger of selfreinvention is a form of change so rapid and complete that identity becomes disposable. Instead of finding ourselves, we lose ourselves.’ Feminist theorist Rosi Braidotti, acknowledging the fluidity of contemporary identities, focuses less on individualism and more on connection, both social and genealogical. She writes: ‘Identity for me is a play of multiple, fractured aspects of the self; it is relational, in that it requires a bond to the ‘other’; it is retrospective, in that it is fixed through memories and recollections, in the genealogical process’ (Braidotti, 1994: 166). Thus for Braidotti, identity may be a contemporary project of the self, but it is a self in context, in social relation with the people around oneself in the present, as well as the remembered self and the recollected influences of the past. In Briadotti's view identity is not always rational or conscious. While we have agency and can construct our own identities to an extent, identity is constrained by personal experiences, interaction with the material and social world, culturally available options, and structures such as gender, race, and class. At the social level, identification with other people creates recognisable inter-subjective or social identities such as ‘craftswoman’ or ‘quilter’. At a cultural level, individuals and groups identify with or juxtapose themselves in relation to cultural narratives of particular identities.
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Like Braidotti (1994) we understand that identities are not constructed in social isolation. It is cultural discourses that provide the context for individuals' construction and understanding of identities, whether by adoption, adaptation or rejection of identities that exist, albeit in a fluid and flexible way, in cultural discourses. As Joseph states, in discussing the negotiated identities of Malaysian migrant women in Australia, ‘identities are simultaneously shaped by, and help shape, discourses’ (2013:35). Like all cultural discourses, the discourses around craft and craftmaking shift and change over time and in different parts of the community. Parker (1984) and Isaacs (1987) are among a number of scholars who have documented aspects of the long history of women's craft and craftmaking. Both Parker and Issacs illustrated the range of craftwork undertaken both by poor women who ‘had no alternative but to make the things they needed, who often recycled materials including flour sacks and sugar bags; and those women who had more time and resources to spend on their craft… [including both] the purely functional and the highly decorative’ (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010: 10). The increasing availability of manufactured goods, alongside the increasing numbers of women in the paid workforce in industrialised countries like Australia, has reduced the necessity for making household items at home. However, craft and craftmaking have not disappeared. The current popularity of craft can be seen in the increase in craft groups such as Stitch 'n Bitch, the rise of DIY and use of craft as a form of activism (yarn bombing and graffiti knitting) and in the proliferation of craft blogs and websites. This resurgence has been attributed to various factors including the ‘rejection of the consumer culture’ that has led to a re-valuing of handmade objects, driven by movements like the ‘slow’ movements that often have environmental and ethical concerns (Collier, 2011: 104), health and wellbeing benefits (Gandolfo & Grace, 2009, 2010) and the reclaiming of craft practices by feminists. Feminism has had a complex relationship with craft, certainly some second wave feminists who wanted to free women from the domestic sphere and create opportunities for them to pursue an education and professional work, rejected craft. However, other feminists such as the artist Judy Chicago who used a range of textile crafts in her installation The Dinner Party (1970s), a political work that challenged the omission of women from history, have argued for and continue to argue for the importance of valuing craft and craftmaking practices. While some women are gathering together and knitting to protest against war or the lack of action on climate change, and others are taking up quilting or sewing to help them relax, as an avenue for creative expression, it appears that at least in some sections of the community the old discourses persist—ideas about craft as a ‘timefiller’ activity for women with nothing much to do and therefore necessarily anti-feminist. As Betsy Hosegood writes in her article, ‘Not Tonight Darling, I’m Knitting’: ‘Over and over again women who knit wrestle with their positions in society as either feminists or homemakers’ (Hosegood, 2009:157). Contemporary craftswomen experience their identities within this ambiguous, contested space. The study The Everyday creativity of women craftmakers was a narrative research project funded by Spotlight Pty Ltd and Victoria
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University, and undertaken by the authors. The purpose of the research was to explore, from the perspectives of amateur craftswomen, what craftmaking means to women, and any links they perceived between their craftmaking and their wellbeing. For the research, we filmed interviews with 15 amateur craftswomen in their homes. The women were recruited with the help of Spotlight, a major Australian retailer of fabrics and craft supplies, through a targeted call for expressions of interest to their VIP customers. We specifically recruited women who undertook at least 4 or 5 hours of craftwork per week but considered their craftwork a ‘hobby’ and not a professional activity. We included women of different ages and from different cultural backgrounds, and women undertaking a range of different craft activities, for example knitting, quilting, mosaics, quilling and wool embroidery. Each interview started with a guided tour of the woman's craftwork. The discussions that started during the tour flowed into the interviews, providing an opportunity to explore in detail the complex and varied roles and meanings that craftmaking has in these women's lives. As well as asking the women some general questions about the roles and meanings of craftmaking in their lives and the links with wellbeing, we asked each woman about the genesis of her interest in craftmaking, her past and current engagement with craft, and particularly significant pieces. Photo 1. Participants meet for the first time at the ‘it keeps me sane exhibition’. (Photographer—Maurice Grant-Drew).
The interviews were transcribed and the authors undertook thematic narrative analysis of the data as described by Riessman (2008). The findings were communicated in an exhibition of the women's craftworks and the production of a short film as well as scholarly publications based on the research (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010, 2009; Grace, Gandolfo, & Candy, 2009). The major themes of creative expression, wellbeing, intergenerational and familial connection, giving, social and community connection, identity, and pleasure, joy and love of making are discussed in previous publications. However, during the main data analysis, we identified three participants who told what Georgakopoulou (2007) would call ‘small stories’ of ambivalence and fluidity regarding their identities as craftmakers. We undertook further analysis of these three interviews in order to explore a new research question: How do contemporary amateur craftswomen narrate complexity and ambivalence in their identities? The findings of this analysis could form the basis for further, more extensive and focussed research on this topic.
Findings As participants told us their stories about learning craftmaking skills, about the making of particular craft pieces and of other people's responses to their work, they expressed fluid, shifting and complex identities as craftswomen. Their stories illustrated the ambiguity and ambivalence they experience in constructing and performing their identities in relation to cultural and historical discourses around craft and craftmaking. The act of participating in the research prompted the women to reflect on their identities as craftswomen, in some cases for the first time, and in the act of responding to our questions and requests for narratives, they performed and to some extent reconstructed their identities as craftswomen. The research not only documented the women's perspectives and narratives, but influenced their perceptions of craftmaking as a valued activity— worthy of academic research. While all of the participants talked about the meaning of craft to the them and how they combined it into their lives alongside other roles and responsibilities as mothers, as aunts, as professional women, the three women we have chosen to focus on in this article talked more directly about the way that craft and craftmaking challenged other aspects of their identity. The three participants we are discussing in this article expressed their passion and love for craftmaking, along with their awareness of broader discourses that devalue craftmaking as an identity. One of the participants, Jenny, is a retired professional woman. She identifies as a feminist and deliberately addresses feminist concerns that craft may lead to the ‘dumbing down of women’. The second participant, Amanda, is a young woman. Amanda refers to popular culture and media references to craftmakers as ‘freaks’ and as ‘nannas’ in her narrative. The third participant is Trish. She works full time in a busy research position at a Melbourne university. When Trish first arrived in Australia from Ireland, she felt like an ‘outsider’. While there may have been other factors that identified her as a migrant, she felt it was her craft work, and the fact that she often wore hand knitted outfits, that set her apart as an outsider. In response, she stopped knitting. However, she soon realised that knitting is an integral part of who she is and she took it up again. During the interviews all three women, often with humour, acknowledged the ambiguities and contradictions in their own stories and identities. Photo 2. Amanda Smith's jewellery. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien).
Amanda is a young woman, a prolific, very skilled maker of clothes, jewellery, cross stitches, toys and cushions. She begins her interview with a story about being taught to sew as a child: Amanda: I started to sew when my Nanna got me a little Strawberry Shortcake sewing machine, where you turn the
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handle and the needle goes up and down. I was about three or four. She gave me her scraps and I was free to do whatever I wanted with them. I was free to use Nanna's good sewing scissors, while she was in the room. Mum showed me how to make a sleeve pattern and a tuxedo for my doll. They encouraged me and taught me things. I think that's why I don't need patterns, because they showed me the basic shapes and I figured it out from there. A number of the women told versions of this story, demonstrating that the transfer of skills from mother to daughter, from grandmother to granddaughter, is relatively common among the craftswomen (Gandolfo & Grace, 2010). Following this story, Amanda tells various other stories about the different craftworks she has made. Most of these – clothes, wedding bags, and jewellery – create a sense of a young contemporary woman who loves fashion, dressing up and spending time with her girlfriends. In the following segment of her interview, Amanda refers to one of the dominant discourses about craftmakers, as being obsessive:
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By the end of the interview she has come to claim that identity ‘all us freaks’ and to include herself in it. For her, the process of volunteering for the research and preparing for the interview prompted her to review her ideas about her own identity. She does craft because it is an integral part of the day-today flow of her life, not to fulfil some idea of herself, but when she realises that it is such an important part of her life, she acknowledges it as part of her identity. She is also aware that her narrative, the one she is telling us, and the one she has entrusted us to tell, will show the ‘other side of all us freaks’ and in that way contest and challenge those very discourses of crafts and craftswomen. Photo 3. Jenny Chantry's quilts. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien).
Amanda: Look, when I first heard about this whole idea I just envisaged these people who have their whole house covered in patchwork or their whole house is all crossstitched. I thought that's the kind of people you'd be looking for, I didn't think that you'd want to speak to me. However, in her preparation for the research she realises something about herself in relation to this view of craftmakers: Amanda: But … when I was looking for things to show you, I realised that my house was filled with stuff that I make and I am that freak. And I didn't think I was, but I am. And that's okay I think. I don't think I am taking it too far. Not for now anyway. You never know, I might change in the future. And then later towards the end of the interview: Amanda: I think it's nice that you're doing this, cause it made me think about craft not, like a lot of people think craft activities are for therapeutic reasons or they're for nannas. It's interesting when people find out I do a lot of sewing and I've done a lot of craft, they just don't get it because I'm not a nanna or I don't need to do basket weaving or something to keep my sanity. It's like, I'm not what they think in their brain about somebody who would be doing craft. So I think it's good that you're doing this to see the other side [of] all us freaks. [laughs] Amanda is clearly aware that there are particular cultural discourses about craft and craftswomen. They situate craft as something done by older women, nannas and people who need therapy, ‘craft freaks’ whose homes are covered in patchwork and cross-stitch. In her narrative she makes clear that she is not that sort of craftswoman. We are in her house, and she is showing us around; it is not a cross-stitched house. However, the sewing machine takes up a central space in the lounge room and some people, she tells us, including her husband see her as a ‘sewing freak’. She is clearly not old or in the need of therapy but she does believe that ‘it's time out…[and] it does keep me a little bit sane.’
Jenny started making quilts after she retired. She took up making quilts from vintage and contemporary Japanese fabrics, almost by ‘accident’: Jenny: Well I didn't think I was making craft to start with. I had on our bed a commercial quilt that I'd bought, or an over the top throw. And it was looking a bit the worse for wear and I thought I couldn't find another one and I would make it. I bought fabric and I bought everything; the fabric I liked for the top and bottom, and it was an absolute disaster. I didn't realise that when you do thick stuff you have to have a special machine piece to run it through. So it was a disaster and I threw it away. But I actually found, in the process of doing that, a quilting shop. I'd never, ever, ever in my life, noticed a quilting shop. Now whether that was because I was too busy at work, wasn't looking, but I was just absolutely intrigued with fabric. I just wanted to do something with fabric. And I just started to be interested, found out, asked a few more questions … Also I was given some Japanese furniture for a present and I love Japanese things, so I don't know, I just fell into it. I was out one day looking at Japanese furniture. They had kimonos, I thought
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Kimonos—quilts, why can't you do that, sounds like a good idea, and just went from there. Jenny's story of discovering quiltmaking has some of the flavour of a love story, falling in love with quiltmaking surprised Jenny, but her love for this craft work has been long and sustaining:
She is quite prepared to live with the tensions between her feminism and her craft making, with no great pressure to resolve any contradiction. Photo 4. Trish O'Connor's necklace. (Photographer—Daniel O'Brien and Monica Liu).
Jenny: I just love it. I love going to shops, buying stuff. I love looking. I love the travel around it. I love websites. I love Op shops for books. Everywhere I go, I find it's quite interesting because in the back of my mind, I've always got these ideas about where I would use it… I love the feel of them. I love the look of them. I love giving them to people. I tell them they don't need to have them out every time I come to visit them because that's an unfair thing to expect. It's touched something in me, really a very basic thing that I get a lot of enjoyment out of. It has become a major interest and occupation in her life. In the following segment from her interview she refers to a second wave feminist discourse that condemned craft work as a time wasting, dumbing down of women. In her interview she discusses a tussle between her feminist sensibility and her desire for her craft: Jenny: … right at the beginning – and I don't give two hoots now, coming from the sort of background of work – I went to quilting classes and I was horrified at the perfectionism people are striving for. And I thought ‘How could anybody spend their life trying to get equal sized stitches across a quilt?. That this is the dumbing down of women.’ I was really taken by that. I thought, ‘This is shocking!’ All my political sensitivities and all my feminism went ‘This is wrong. This is wrong!’ And to an extent there's a little bit of that, that nags me, that says if you lost contact with it, you could easily lose contact with reality in a way. And that it could be the dumbing down of women. So I've had this sort of tussle in my head about, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, you know? But I just get carried away with it so it doesn't matter. It's just enjoyable and life goes on and so on. Jenny previously worked in very senior corporate and government positions and is still involved in a number of political and feminist networks. In response to Marty's question: ‘Is there anything you’re afraid of with the quilt making?’, it is her perception of the second wave feminist view of craftmaking that she refers to. She establishes here her identity as a feminist: ‘All my political sensitivities and all my feminism went: This is wrong. This is wrong!’ But she lives and is prepared to live with these contradictions: ‘So I've had this sort of tussle in my head about, is this a good thing, is this a bad thing, you know? But I just get carried away with it so it doesn't matter. It's just enjoyable and life goes on and so on.’ Jenny lives with the contradictions because craft brings her joy. In other parts of her interview she reflects on the time in her life when she first started quilting, saying she was ‘just like a kid in a lolly shop’ and that she would wake early and leap out of bed each morning because she could not wait to get her hands on her fabrics. What she says about her engagement with craft shows that her identity is not fixed, resolved, tidy.
Trish grew up in Ireland. Her first experience of knitting was in primary school but it wasn't until she was taught to knit by her grandmother when she was in her 20s that she developed a passion for it. Early on in the interview she tells this story of making her wedding dress: Trish: We had been secretly planning to get married and move to Canada. I had just left university and I had only had one pay cheque. We had no budget for an expensive wedding. I had seen this pattern in a magazine. It was a seriously ugly dress. When I told my sister I'd got engaged and I was going to make my wedding dress, her first reaction was, ‘Not that ugly thing you've seen in the magazine?’ It was like a vest and had big bulky sleeves on it. It was shocking. But I loved the pattern and I saw the potential in it. It was really fun to knit. But when I was halfway through the skirt and I realised I'd run out of wool. I didn't have enough wool to finish it. I was thinking, this was going to be a strapless number for the wedding. I actually had to ring just about every wool shop in Dublin and I finally found enough balls to complete it. That was major panic. And then it needed to have pearl buttons down the front of it. It took my Mum three hours to get twelve buttons straight on it. And my friend, I think she was eighty-two at the time, she was blind in one eye from shingles and she did all the crochet work around the neck and cuffs, because I couldn't crochet at the time. It represented so many people's work and it's full of funny stories. My aunt washed it and it took a week for it to dry. I was getting married on Thursday and two days before, the dog jumped on it and covered it in mud. The dog was very lucky he was alive. That dress is imbued with so many different stories and memories for me. Following this story Trish talks about her love and passion for knitting. She knits most days because, she says, ‘if it's not in my day, it's a bad day.’ When Trish first arrived in Australia she gave up knitting: Trish: …because I felt I was too different. The clothes I was wearing marked me as an outsider and there weren't people just sitting around the place knitting. So I gave it up for quite a few years but I really missed it. Then I said, ‘No,
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knitting is an integral part of who I am, so I had to go back to it.’ I ended up going back to it, I couldn't resist it. Trish goes on to say that as knitting became more popular in Australia it became easier for her to continue but she had already made the decision that it was so much part of who she is that she would not be able to do without it. In the rest of the interview she tells us a number of stories of how she has created craft and knitting communities around her: she has a knitting group on the train, a craft group at work, and she belongs to a local Stitch 'n Bitch group. Clearly belonging is important to Trish's identity and so is knitting. When Trish could no longer resist her passion for knitting and reembraced it, she resolved her anxiety about belonging by finding or creating groups that share and value the craftmaker identity. Discussion We have touched on some of the ways the women through their narratives explored their identity as craftswomen, and how that identity interacts with other aspects of their identities as feminists, young women, professionals, and migrants. For us the focus on the ways women actively use the cultural discourses to position themselves within their own narratives makes visible the complexities of their identities. Amanda admits to being a ‘freak’ but not a nanna or someone in need of therapy. Jenny feels a tension between feminism and craftmaking, but puts it aside because of her love for her craft. Trish gave up knitting because she felt it positioned her as an ‘outsider’, but subsequently found a way to have both—her identity as a knitter and her sense of belonging. The women position themselves as active agents in these narratives. They express themselves creatively and derive satisfaction from the joy and pleasure of craftmaking. They are not only willing to live with the ambiguity and paradoxes, but rather they take pleasure from the subversiveness of being who they are rather than conforming to the stereotypes of what others may expect. Our participants do not to locate themselves as identified subjects within dominant discourses, but rather refer to the discourse/s in order to position themselves by the actions of critique, resistance and subversion. Often to nominate what they are not. Amanda, Jenny and Trish came to craftmaking in quite different ways from each other. Amanda grew up in a household where sewing was taken for granted. Fabrics, the good dressmaking scissors, and making clothes were part of her environment. Playing with her dolls included making clothes for them. Jenny, on the other hand, attempted her first quilt as a retired career woman, with an optimistic if somewhat misplaced confidence in her ability to do something that she had never done before. Her subsequent love affair with quilting, in particular making beautifully original quilts from vintage and contemporary Japanese fabrics, was inspired by the aesthetics, and carried along by her confidence in her ability to learn new techniques to make things by hand. Trish took up knitting as a young woman and launched into large and complex projects including knitting her own wedding dress. For Trish, knitting is part of her everyday life. Our research focussed on individual women's stories and their reflections regarding what craftmaking means to them. It became clear that their craftmaking was inspired by their own
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desire for creative expression, and the joy they derive from expressing their creativity through handmade objects that are beautiful, useful, and can be given as gifts and appreciated by other people. It also became clear that their identities are connected with cultural discourses concerning craftmaking, and are socially connected with other craftmakers. These connections may be ironic, juxtaposed, self-consciously discontinuous, or simply enthusiastic. Amanda's claim that ‘I am that freak’ was ironic and humorous. Jenny's acceptance of the traces of feminist ambivalence in her love affair with quilt making was defiant and proud. Trish's acknowledgement that knitting, even if it marks her as an outsider, is an integral part of identity led her to seek out other craftswomen and to create her own ‘communities’ to which she could belong. She set up a Stitch ‘n’ Bitch group in her suburb and formed small knitting groups on the train and at work. Perhaps this was made easier for Trish over time as she became more secure in her new environment, perhaps when she became aware of other knitters and crafters lurking in subcultures around her, but in her narrative the focus is on her realisation that knitting is part of her identity and a desire to reclaim it. During the research, the participants became increasingly curious about each other, and eager to meet, illustrating Braidotti's (1994) notions of the relational and social contextual aspects of identity. For the women, a new aspect of identity was created by their participation in this particular research, and they wanted to find and connect with the other people who shared that identity. Their opportunity came at the exhibition of their works that was held as part of the research. Stories, like works of art, communicate beyond words. Often rich in symbols, metaphor, and humour, they express complex layers of meaning in ways that cannot be captured by the rationally-based responses typical of conventional social research. Narratives by their very nature contain ambivalence, ambiguity and inconsistences that allow for and reflect the fluidity and complexities of contemporary identities; they create a space in which the nuances of lived experience can be communicated. The concept of identity is complex. As soon as we focus on one aspect, for example self-expression, another aspect such as interpersonal connection demands our attention. This research adds to the understanding of identity construction—not just as an internal project of the self, not just as socially constructed, but also constructed in embodied interaction with the material world. The narratives of our research participants capture and communicate the playfulness and ambiguity of how they experience their own identities as craftswomen. Their participation in the research constituted a performance of those identities. Living in postmodern times gives them a freedom of self expression, even self-invention as Bauman (2000) suggests. However, they do not communicate the kind of individualism that Elliot and du Gay (2009) describe. This is a socially connected practice, sometimes with tension between self expression and social connection. Their narratives are replete with references to interpersonal connectedness—Amanda's genealogical connection with her mother and grandmother, Trish's connections with her craft groups, and Jenny's connection with other quilters at classes. This relational aspect resonates with Braidotti's discussion of identity. There is a strong theme of self expression, in embodied interaction with the material world.
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Conclusion
References
This small preliminary research project illustrates that, for the contemporary women who contributed to this research, their ‘craftswoman’ identity is no longer a conforming performance of a culturally approved female identity, but an urgent self-expression, a claiming of something integral, joyful and somewhat subversive. It is an identity performed through their embodied, material practices, and their products linger in the environment, communicating some of the subtlety and complexity, but also the simplicity and groundedness of their identities. The expression of creativity speaks of a desire to be recognised as unique individuals, but at the same time to remain recognisable as valid human beings, distinctive but recognisable. Misrecognition—being stereotyped because of some characteristic, is a painful experience, but is more than balanced by the joy of connected recognition when people meet and recognise someone like themselves. This research supports some of the contemporary ideas about identity, and adds the idea that people can reasonably comfortably accommodate ambiguity and contradiction in their understandings of themselves, seeing these aspects as playful, ironic, fun, and interesting, not necessarily as matters to be resolved.
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Ethics This research was approved by the Victoria University Human Research Ethics Committee, Approval HRETH07/126 and the participants consented to being identified and the use of photographs of them and their work being used in the reporting of this research. Acknowledgements Spotlight Pty Ltd, Australia and Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia funded this research.