Matthew Dyck and Ayame Ulrich
The Uniter (Volume 67, Number 13)
In an interview in which he discusses the delights (and importance) of idleness, Roland Barthes interestingly touches upon the question of knitting.
Knitting, says Barthes, is like amateur painting; "an absolutely gratuitous activity, corporal, aesthetic ... and truly restful at the same time". It's an authentic and affirmative form of laziness, "because there's no pride or narcissism involved".
In fact, knitting might be thought of as the epitome of euphoric idleness (unless of course one is gripped by utilitarian desire to actually finish a piece of work); a perfect example of a manual activity that opens up a simple yet successful form of freedom.
Unfortunately, knitting has been increasingly marginalized within our society. Something that is acceptable only if done by elderly women. Thus, as Barthes goes on to suggest (without too much irony), perhaps one of the most unconventional and, therefore, most scandalous things would be for a young person, particularly a young man, to pull out some needles in a public space and openly begin to knit.
Strangely enough, three decades after Barthes playfully imagined this revolt into handicraft, it came to pass as young punks, goths, and bearded hipsters suddenly became more interested in cross-stitch patterns and yarn bombing, than those more traditional activities associated with alternative lifestyles. (When they weren't busy baking, of course ...!)
Unsurprisingly, not everyone was amused or impressed by this development. The late Steven Wells, for example, wrote in a piece for The Guardian that the very idea of radical knitting is "as absurd as radical dusting or radical toilet cleaning" and that it signals the death not only of youth culture, but of feminism.
However, whilst it's true that Germaine Greer "didn't articulate her disgust with women's oppression by knitting a lavender and yellow toilet-roll holder" and that "Jimi Hendrix didn't take to the stage at Woodstock wearing a nice orange and puce cardigan", I think it just as ludicrous to propose sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll as being the revolutionary solutions to all life's problematic aspects - surely no one really believes this any longer, do they?
Ultimately, I don't care how people choose to articulate their lives and express their politics; it's all good, providing it's done with style, with humour, and without any trace of ascetic militancy. What I don't have time for is the attempt to establish hierarchies in which certain acts, arts, or pleasures are privileged and others denigrated and despised.
Notes
Roland Barthes, 'Dare to Be Lazy', from an interview conducted by Christine Eff, in The Grain of the Voice, trans. Linda Coverdale, (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 338-45. The lines quoted are on pp. 340-41.
Those interested in reading the Steven Wells Guardian article (14 June, 2008) should click here.
This year's World Wide Knit in Public Day is on Saturday 18 June, 2016. Click here for details.
This post is dedicated to CheyOnna Sewell and the women of The Yarn Mission.
