Knot Your Average Craft: Reading Crochet As A Queer Practice

Abstract:

This article reads crochet as a queer practice through the work of Sara Ahmed and Jack Halberstam. It first turns to the material specificities of the craft, mapping out how the technique and materiality of crochet- and the intimate, haptic interaction taking place between the material and the maker- gives rise to meaning by blurring the boundaries between mind and body. It then turns to the historical context of the practice, and how it has historically been devalued and marginalised from artistic and scholarly contexts for being on the weaker ends of the binaries of art/craft, male/ female, public/ private. By attending to the practice of crochet through Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenological perspective and considering its epistemological implications in the context of Jack Halberstam’s (2010) work on queerness and failure, this paper argues that reconceptualising crochet as a queer practice would ultimately help restore the agency of the craft and those who have traditionally practiced it by taking it beyond the cisheteronormative binaries that have historically constrained it. The article considers how such a reconceptualisation can have broader implications for academic research practice, identifying avenues for future creative-critical research.