"Making something for myself" : women, quilts, culture and feminism
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 1998
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This thesis juxtaposes a historical and ethnographic account of a highly
organised women's activity -- quiltmaking -- with an examination of feminist
discussions on art, craft, leisure, culture and folklore. In describing and
analysing the quiltmaking revival in Australia, I attempt to show how
quiltmakers have collectively constructed a space in which they avoid, and
indeed, deconstruct, some of the ideas and practices which constrain women.
As a case study, quiltmaking reveals the practical 'workarounds' that these
women have found, which enable them to take time and space for themselves
in the face of family responsibilities, to be creative and proud of their artistic
efforts in the face of conventions of womanly modesty, and to arrange their
own public events in the face of training in silence and backroom support. In
so doing, they break down the divisions between professional and amateur,
commercial and voluntary, and even public and private.
For the most part, feminist analysis has ignored or misunderstood such
women. Although feminist philosophers, academics and artists have often
used the products of traditionally feminine crafts as metaphors, examples and
parables, they have not always done so with knowledge or familiarity. My
study of feminist art and craft writing suggests that this is because of a complex
interaction between the political and strategic needs of academic feminists at
different times and a lack of detailed attention to the actual creative choices of
such women, who often refuse the label 'artist', though they are indubitably
cultural producers. Similarly, feminist theorists and researchers of leisure
have been concerned with why women do not choose the same leisure
activities as men, but have discounted the specific pleasures of traditional
women's skills, and the homosocial organisations they inspire, as positive
reasons for the choice of such activities. Cultural studies analysis, with its
emphasis on the products of the commercial media has underestimated the
popularity and importance of voluntarily organised cultural production, such
as quiltmaking, especially when such production has not been seen as
politically interesting. Feminist folklore studies provides the only model for
research which takes such activities seriously, and pays attention to the
complex ways in which they both subvert and support women's traditional
roles.
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