Bookmaking as Critical and Feminist Practice of Design

Arts expansion in academia has called into question concepts, norms and regulations concerning writing and publishing. Given precedents of ‘critical practices of design’ and ‘research through practice’ grappling with such issues, I take these as ways to reconsider the academic activity of making a book (‘bookmaking’) as a critical and feminist practice of design. Through specifically feminist modes articulated by Jane Rendell – namely collectivity, interiority, alterity, materiality, and performativity – I describe two edited books, through which I am able to discuss critical dimensions and feminist positions in the detailed everyday activities of bookmaking. I argue that feminist practice questions and opposes, but it also projects, activates, and enacts alternative norms or ideals – here, alternatives to academic norms and regulations concerning edited books. Naming and elucidating detailed aspects of bookmaking activity, as mundane critical ‘practise’ continually deliberated and performed, it is nevertheless possible to draw relations to larger theoretical issues. For example, discussing across differently situated/conditioned bookmaking practices makes it possible to trace implications of bookmaking within larger political economies, socio-economic structures, theoretical and ideological commitments.

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