Homesickness: Housework, Worldbuilding, and Artmaking

Abstract

Homemaking practices have been heavily criticized by feminists like Luce Irigaray and Simone de Beauvoir for their role in the subjugation of women. While sympathetic to the way that homemaking has been deployed in deeply problematic ways, largely to the harm of racialized and Indigenous women, I contend that homemaking is a foundational aspect of life. As such, it is vital that we develop a mode of houseworking that allows us to undertake these necessary, life-sustaining tasks, without unduly burdening ourselves or resulting in an experience akin to Sisyphus and his boulder. This paper draws on theories of home, dwelling, and aesthetics to argue that homes and the work that goes into their production have value which can be recovered for the sake of individual and collective worldbuilding. I suggest that housework has two operative modes: (1) conservative housekeeping and (2) progressive homemaking—the latter of which is creative, future-oriented, and affirming of subjectivity.