Narrating complex identities: Contemporary women and craft

SynopsisPersonal 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.