test10In copyright (not visible)string(26) "In copyright (not visible)"
array(4) {
["txt"]=>
string(26) "In copyright (not visible)"
["block_datas"]=>
string(0) ""
["block_thumbnail"]=>
string(1) "1"
["block_media"]=>
string(1) "1"
}
The Paradoxical Knitting Activism (Pussy Hat)
| Portrayed | Rosado, Wilmarie |
| Portrayed Org | Gender and Cultures of Equality (GRACE), GRACE |
| Period | 2017-2017 |
| Description | Description provided by artist: .Women were told to use the needle instead of the pen. The needle was conceived as the symbol of women domestication, of immobility, the “female pen.” This instrument was the antithesis of the phallic pen. Even Mary Wollstonecraft was against women use of the needle. In her text The Vindication of the Rights of Women with Strictures on Political and Moral Subjects (1792) she wrote: “I have already inveighed against the custom of confining girls to their needle, and shutting them out from all political and civil employments”. Like Wollstonecraft, many women attempt to detached themselves from the image of the “proper” lady with no intellectual capacity to use the pen. But women's literary and feminist activism history complicates, even more, the simple binary of “the pen or needle” or the idea of considering needle incongruent with political and civil matters. While some women rejected the needlework as a confining labor, other, specifically women writers showed the similarities between the needlework and writing, a strategy to exemplify how the art of writing could be part of the “female” domain (Hedges, 1991). This allegory between knitting and writing, the metaphor of textual work as textile work, gave them the perfect excuse to write as they knit.. .Nowadays, an interesting example of the use of knitting for feminist purposes is the Pussy Hat Project. The original idea of the project was to make a visual statement of women’s discomfort during the first day after Trump government's inauguration. Today the use of the pussy hat has become global. The internet is full of images of people wearing the hats in protest and marches all over the world. As Joan Scott (1996) states “Feminist agency is paradoxical in its expression.” What can be considered a confining instrument for women, could easily become the symbol of feminist resistance.. .This artwork is part of the project Footnotes on Equality: http://footnotesonequality.eu/all/ |
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https://hdl.handle.net/11653/obj2275
