You Are Not a Lemming: The Imagined Resistance of Craft Citizenship

This thought piece examines the ways in which pre-Industrial craft ideals are taken up in a late-capitalist context, where craft is framed as an act of resistance, couched in the language of rebellion. Mobilized by big business and the culture industry alike, this pre-modern archetype draws upon an intractable yet mythical narrative in which craft is synonymous with altruism, morality, resistance, and self-determination. While subverting a contemporary theoretical understanding of craft as a mode of investigating both the material and the immaterial, this model focuses on the attributes of the maker within society. The imagined craftworker personifies a fully realized notion of citizenship that extends beyond neoliberal boundaries, and speaks to a contemporary audience wishing to identify as more than consumers within a capitalist state. As a mode of cultural capitalism, craft is mined for its connotations of citizenship and social responsibility, advocating rebellion yet ensuring its impotence. The symbolic power of the manifesto is often harnessed, and draws upon an imagined populist history of grassroots uprising, becoming a persuasive—albeit illusory—counterpoint to neoliberal capitalism. Ultimately, this theoretical framework serves to perpetuate the conditions of the late capitalist state rather than destabilize them, underscoring power inequity, cultural hegemony, and rebellion as commodity.