•  
  •  
 

Katja May

Abstract

This article moves beyond binary conceptions of the Pussyhat Project as “good or bad activism”, or indeed as good or bad feminism (Zouggarri, 2018, p. 1). Instead, I use the concept of texture as a lens through which to trace the different threads that have shaped and continue to shape the Pussyhat Project and its reception, while simultaneously paying attention to the entangled nature of these threads. Attending to the different textures of the process of making as well as the finished object serves to question or, at least, complicate dominant narratives and concepts of feminist solidarity, protest and craft. As such, my analysis gives texture to the Pussyhat Project and the Women’s March, while, at the same time, making visible the unevenness in the feminist struggle for liberation and affective solidarity. In addition, it gestures towards how this texture can become a means to position people closer towards a grounding of feminist practice in affective solidarity based on dissonance rather than an overcoming of difference that silences the experiences of queer and transwomen, women of colour and women from the Global South.

Author Biography

Katja May is a final year PhD student at the University of Kent. She is also an avid quilter and has facilitated craftivist workshops. Her interdisciplinary research project combines methodologies and theoretical approaches from the Humanities and Social Sciences to explore practices of needlework as a form of politics within feminist activism. Katja’s wider research interests include feminist theory, affect, textiles crafts and protest cultures.

Download

Share

COinS