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Part One
Movements, Spaces and Rights
Global Synthesis
Glenda Tibe Bonifacio
In different parts of the world, the quest for gender equal rights under the rubric of human rights remains amidst unsupportive social structures, intolerant spaces, repressive political regimes, terrorism and adverse impacts of globalization. The idea that women are equal to men in all aspects of human existence seems unfathomable in patriarchal socialization; that women deserve less rights than men has been entrenched in societies, both western and non-western, but now find new claims for recognition and social justice. Social movements for change, particularly feminist-inspired and regardless of their scale and reach, resonate in many communities among individuals and groups seeking due respect and rightful belonging as citizens and, basically, as human beings. In the 21st century going forward, women’s rights as human rights set the premise to embark on continued activism in Asia, Africa, South America and the Middle East, but not to exclude North America and Europe where the rise of conservatism has continued to challenge present feminist gains. Due to differing experiences under colonization and economic globalization, women and other marginalized groups such as the LGBTQI+ around the world advocate for rights within given political systems in accordance with their own particular worldviews and not necessarily anchored in the universal principle of human rights. Non-accommodation of their claims for equality and fair treatment often leads to continued persecution, migration and displacement. But negotiating spaces and finding common grounds among and between diverse groups of women instil hope in a better tomorrow.
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Chapter 1
Knitting the Feminist Self: Craftivism, Yarn Bombing and the Navigation of Feminist Spaces
Sonja Boon and Beth Pentney
Abstract
In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of craftivism — yarn bombing, specifically — in a fourth-year undergraduate seminar on feminist praxis. We suggest that knitting in the classroom, as an ‘everyday [act] of defiance’ (Baumgardner & Richards, 2000, p. 283), opens a productive space for complex and challenging conversations, in the process enabling not only different ways of listening, but also different ways of learning. Knitting, as a meditative and embodied practice, encourages and supports critical attentiveness. We also argue that craftivism can operate to make change in a way that emphasizes collaboration, non-violence and critical self-reflection. Social change, in a craftivist framework, happens in the everyday, and perhaps more radically, within the domestic spaces of the normatively feminine. Finally, our project demonstrated that knitting as feminist praxis serves a bridging function: we contend that systems of power may be challenged through knitting-as-protest, and that students may be able to practice engaged citizenship as they navigate the slippery borders between public and private, and academic and community-based feminisms.
Keywords: Craftivism; feminist praxis; social change; yarn bombing; knitting as pedagogy
Sonja: When I handed out knitting needles and yarn on the first day of class, I was met with incredulity and uncomfortable laughter. Knitting, as an embodied practice, was foreign to my students. It was also foreign to their notions of feminism, rooted as they were in understandings of women’s access to the public sphere. As student Allison Smith observed: ‘Throughout my childhood I always thought knitting was, like, a granny hobby, something you do while you’re in a rocking chair’ (Tucker, 2014). Knitting, with its links to the domestic, the home, the private sphere (Parker, 2010), was the last thing they expected to be doing in a fourth-year seminar on feminist praxis.
What happens when knitting enters the feminist classroom? In this chapter, we reflect on the possibilities of craftivism — yarn bombing, specifically — in the university classroom. In 2013, we hatched a craftivist project. Developed specifically for an undergraduate seminar on the topic of feminist praxis, it was designed to be collaborative and immersive, a form of experiential learning that could enable students to think through the logics of feminist activism. Beth, an expert in feminist media studies and third-wave feminisms, is also an experienced knitter with research interests in craftivism (Pentney, 2008). Sonja, teaching the seminar for the first time, wanted to move discussions about feminist praxis beyond the students’ expected parameters of social justice activism through marching, protests and rallies.
Our conversations started via email.
Monday, 25 November 2013 at 11:11
Hi Beth,
My thought […] would be to have you come and talk about activisms in the third wave, and if you wanted you could actually stage a knit in or a craftivist act or whatever […]
Hi Sonja, my immediate thought would be to do a yarn bombing on campus, and then after we’ve done it, come back to the classroom for hot chocolate and some lively discussion about craftivism and its goals when related to feminism […]. This would require a bit of prep (getting people to knit, or getting people to get their hands on some knitting pieces) […].
Over the course of a few months, we worked out a basic plan. We would initiate a yarn bombing project linked to Red Trench, one of the most controversial artworks ever created in Newfoundland and Labrador. The students would lead the way in determining the shape and form of the yarn bombing as a form of feminist praxis. Sonja would teach the students how to knit.
Craftivism
Craftivism is a process whereby crafters use their creative skills and energies to comment on and respond to political causes and issues of social concern (Greer, 2008, 2014). Craftivist projects have included the UK-based Craftivist Collective’s Jigsaw Project (Craftivist Collective, n.d.), the US-based Wombs on Washington initiative (Pentney, 2008) and Newfoundland-based artist Barb Hunt’s project, ‘antipersonnel’, for which she knitted pink ‘replicas of anti-personnel land mines’ (Hunt, n.d.). Craftivism emerged out of a resurgence of interest in do-it-yourself (DIY) culture. As Luckman (2013) argues, the notion of the handmade has, in a contemporary, capitalist, mass-produced world, come to be associated with nostalgia and authenticity (pp. 254–255). But it has also taken on a political ethos. Numerous scholars have argued that the DIY phenomenon is a response to and form of resistance against industrial capitalism, capitalist politics of production and environmental concerns (Luckman, 2013; Williams, 2011).
As a mode of activism, craftivism responds to feminist revaluations of notions of ‘women’s work’ (Luckman, 2013), and, more radically, makes public work that was originally designed solely for the domestic sphere (Bratich & Brush, 2011). ‘What causes such discomfort about knitting in public? One might put it this way: Knitting in public is out of place…. Knitting in public turns the interiority of the domestic outward, exposing that which exists within enclosures, through invisibility and through unpaid labor: the production of home life. Knitting in public also inevitably makes this question of space an explicitly gendered one’ (Bratich & Brush, 2011, p. 237). Indeed, contemporary knitting can challenge historical understandings that have linked craft with the domestic, the utilitarian, and the feminine; that is, with work done in the home, ‘usually by women, for “love”’ (Parker, 2010, p. 5).
Recent scholarship (Fields, 2014; Groeneveld, 2010; Kelly, 2014; Pentney, 2008) locates knitting in the context of third-wave feminism, a shift that Fields (2014) articulates as a move ‘from rocking chair to riot grrrl’ (p. 152). This is not to suggest that the feminist reclamation of knitting has been wholly unproblematic. Scholars have pointed to DIY culture’s imbrication within the neoliberal consumer culture it simultaneously seeks to disrupt (Solomon, 2013; Springgay, Hatza, & O’Donald, 2011), and the inherent whiteness of DIY culture more broadly speaking. As Solomon (2013) has argued, most DIY websites and texts are ‘jarringly apolitical’ with neoliberal, consumerist ties (p. 14).
Given all of this, a fourth-year seminar on feminist praxis seemed like an ideal venue to explore notions of gender, craft and social change. Knitting, in particular, was appealing given its role in women’s community and social justice organizing in Newfoundland and Labrador (Harling Stalker, 2006; Hunt, n.d.). During World War I, for example, women from across the island of Newfoundland, working under the auspices of the Women’s Patriotic Association, knit thousands of pairs of socks to send to soldiers stationed on the front lines (Boon, 2010; Warren, 1998, 2005). The networks developed as a result of this work later proved effective in mobilizing for women’s suffrage (Duley, 1993). So, too, has women’s knitting served the needs of tiny outport communities in Newfoundland. The work of the Newfoundland Outport Nursing and Industrial Association (NONIA), for example, enabled outport knitters to sell their goods in the urban center of St. John’s, in the process raising funds to support the salaries of much-needed nurses in outport communities (Cullum, 1995; House, 1990). Collective knitting projects, in this particular geo-political context, built community by bringing women together to share stories and ideas, facilitated political networks among women in far-flung rural communities, and supported local community initiatives.
Casting on: A Project Begins
The first day was the hardest. Students confident in academic reading, researching, and writing struggled to make sense of casting on and stitching. There was awkward laughter. Computers sat closed as students tried to tame their needles. But slowly they worked it out. By the end of the first class, there were smiles. Now it was time for the hard thinking to begin.
Yarn bombing is not, in and of itself, a feminist activity. Rather, as Kelly (2014) points out, ‘the meaning of knitting is dependent on the intention of the knitter and is context-specific’ (p. 134; see also Pentney, 2008). Even as many may work with knitting in apolitical ways, it can and has been taken up as an overtly political activity. As a political act, yarn bombing:
involves using craft, particularly knitting, to alter the physical environment […] in ways that explicitly challenge cultural norms that embrace or condone psychological violence and other forms of coercion resulting from hegemonic socialization […] yarn-bombing ironically suggests by its very name that nonviolent protest is a valuable model of resisting not only physical violence but also systemic (and often identity-based) violence manifested by and resulting from the unequal distribution of material and cultural resources enabling full and equal performances of citizenship. (Williams, 2011, p. 311)
Our site of action? Red Trench, one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most controversial works of art.
Red Trench and the Politics of Art in Newfoundland and Labrador
Artist Don Wright’s Red Trench (1985) remains one of the most contentious pieces of public art ever commissioned in Newfoundland and Labrador (Creates, 1990; Grattan, 1994). Created in 1985, Red Trench was installed in the Confederation Building — the site of the provincial government — late that same year. From the outset, it was the subject of derogatory discussion from workmen finishing up renovations to the building, and to intense media scrutiny, with many observing that the work looked like women’s genitalia (Grattan, 1994).
As a result of this controversy, Red Trench was removed just a few months after its installation and put into storage for eight years. In 1994, it was installed in the Arts Atrium at Memorial University. Again, this installation was not without controversy, as letters sent to the university’s publication, The Gazette, demonstrate. Alumnus Brian Grant (1994) was vociferous in his critique, writing,
It was my understanding that universities foster keen inquiring minds, not promote the flashy wares of snake-oil vendors. Your photo leaves little doubt of the origin and intent of this artistic shame; it also leaves little doubt that Memorial deems to denigrate females by displaying such trash […]. Over the years I have seen numerous odd bits of work masquerading as art and am willing to admit that my taste may not conform to that of others. However, I seriously object to pornographic works blatantly displayed by any university, and am particularly offended that this is happening at Memorial […]. Trash is trash: if it looks like a pig, smells like a pig and snorts like a pig — it probably is a pig. (p. 9)
Others, however, were more supportive. Faculty member Joan Scott (1994), responding to Grant’s letter, linked Red Trench with Newfoundland and Labrador as a place, and with the politics of women’s bodies:
[Red Trench] is a powerful statement which is very much of this place. It speaks of clean fecund shores, especially at low tide […]. The portrayal of genitals is not necessarily pornographic, and does not necessarily ‘denigrate’ those whose genitals are portrayed […]. The Red Trench was hidden away, charged by people like Brian Grant with the crime of looking like a vulva […]. While patriarchy ruled, what […] men said and wrote was not merely descriptive, but prescriptive. Brian Grant assumes a friendly pose, but in 1994, he is saying that...
