Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

some of these concerns, I explore the possibility of a feminist speculative design. I argue that for a feminist
speculative design to be truly transformative it not only needs to acknowledge social inequalities but should
challenge the ahistorical nature of much speculative design practice. I propose a complementary method of
speculation that works with alternative and forgotten pasts in order to think about possible futures. I argue
that by drawing on feminist histories of everyday life, new speculative futures can emerge that pose
decidedly different questions and modes of engagement.
Naomi Stead* & KellyGreenop Domestic Micropractices at the Clothes Line
Domestic laundry practices, in particular the line-drying of clothes, is a particular kind of collaboration
between human and natural world. Line drying is an alliance with a given location’s climate, and weather,
and housing type. It has seasonal and diurnal cycles, and represents a very particular marking of time, of
human life measured in evaporation: wet loads hung out, and dry ones brought in. The study of drying
practices thus offer an aperture through which to approach a range of issues around consumption and
everyday life, everyday sustainability, gendered labour, domestic practices, and the aesthetics of the
everyday. The particular focus of this paper is on the meaning, in personal and political terms, of individual
rituals of laundry-hanging. Drawing on a series of seventeen interviews undertaken by the authors, the
paper attempts to theorise the decision to line-dry laundry as both an ethical and an affective one. While a
number of scholars have studied washing, few have addressed the more particular process of drying. Line
drying (as distinct from tumble drying) has a clear role to play in the reduction of household energy use and
thus in everyday household sustainability. In this the paper follows Jane Bennett, and her contention that
“the bodily disciplines through which ethical sensibilities and social relations are formed are themselves
political and constitute a whole (underexplored) field of ”micropolitics” (Bennett 2007, xii). The paper sets
out to examine the micropolitics of the line drying, but more than this it is concerned with micropractices –
whether the socks are hung together, from toe or cuff, pigeon-toed or splayed, facing left or right, with
matching peg or contrasted. Likewise it addresses a kind of microaesthetics of drying – of everyday
aesthetics (Saito 2007) and ordinary affect (Stewart 2007). Laundry practices have often been framed in
terms of drudgery – of slavery to the washing machine or clothesline, marked by endless, deadening
repetition. Nevertheless, Richard Wilk asks why “we sometimes experience routines and habits as functional,
relaxing, comforting and time-saving, while at other times they are annoying, restrictive, and even
intolerable” (Wilk 2009, 147). Using Wilk’s terms, it is possible to see in some individuals” drying practices a
certain cultivation – a deliberate pushing forward of the habitual chore into a conscious and deliberate
action. For other individuals, and still using Wilk’s terms, drying practices are entirely naturalized – not
considered, not social, nothing more than “submerged” physical experiences. The question is not only when
and why the particular routine chore of hanging out the washing takes on these two distinct modes, but
what that might mean.
2Q
Digital citizenship and communities: ethics and resilience (Chair, Kate Mannell)
Graham Meikle Social Media and Distributed Citizenship
This paper proposes the concept of distributed citizenship — to assume a creative political relation with
others within digital media networks. Relations of distributed citizenship are not defined by or restricted to a
particular geographical location or polity, but are defined rather by shared meanings and collaborative
creativity and action within and through networked digital media. Distributed citizenship describes a set of
potentials made possible by social media, and by the altered experiences and awareness of culture,
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