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walkitoutSubtitled Toward a Theology of Housework
Yeah, I found the book on Amazon (bought it used in hardcover), basically based on the subtitle. I _still_ want a book that is a theology of housework, because if Marie Kondo can do it with Shinto, it ought to be do-able with other spiritual / religious systems and I want to see some alternatives.
So, so, so many problems with this book. The biggest problem is that it dates from that super precious period in early 1980s feminist academic work where they were using pretty much exclusively DWEM sources and struggling to be feminist at the same time.
It is a waste of time. The sooner you go, these people were _horrible_ and every sentence contains at least two identifiable factual errors (yeah, I’m looking at you, Aristotle), the sooner you can move on to something that isn’t a comprehensive waste of time.
A lot of Rabuzzi’s sources that are not ancient and Greek (pedophiles) were psychoanalysts. Enough said.
Rabuzzi is surprisingly dismissive of efforts on the part of other feminist academics of her time. When they went looking for suppressed women philosophers or psychoanalysts or historians or adventurers or whatever, she pretty much dismissed both the contemporary women doing the digging around in the archives AND the really super amazing women they turned up as suffering from ... wait for it ... False Consciousness.
Ahhhhhh. False consciousness. Haven’t heard that in a while, have you?
The book is rubbish. It’s not even that long and it took me years to finish, and I honestly wish I’d never found it. This thing is a train wreck, and one it was fairly easy to look away from. Larded with unconscious displays of economic elitism, racism masquerading as enlightenment, and a conclusion about mysticism and boringness that manages to simultaneously fail at being mystical or even really boring. It is downright fascinating in its misguidedness.
Every once in a while, she spends a paragraph on some interesting experiment with recursion in art, but then she manages to completely cock (yeah, I went there) up her analysis even of that.
So. Is there anything good here? There are the germs of all kinds of interesting things. Unfortunately, she brings them up, dismisses them, and then goes right back to Norman O. Brown or Aristotle or Hemingway (!) or Samuel Beckett (<— Ok, to be honest here I didn’t mind the Beckett references as much).
There are a lot of ways to think about the repetitive nature of housework. You can dream up something else to do with your time that is remunerative enough to justify hiring someone else to do it. You can get hammered enough so you don’t mind the repetitive nature of housework. You can get good enough at it that you can do or think of other things while doing the housework. You can treat it as a meditative activity. You can think of it as an expression of love for yourself, your family and a way to live a good life. They all sort of work, and they all break down occasionally (much like plumbing that, now that I think of it that way). I get a lot out of housework as a meditative activity, and as a life review activity, and as a way of completing things, and editing my life story. I really wanted a book that could sort of do that. Marie Kondo is more about creating an environment that supports a particular mood or emotional state. Not precisely what I am after! What Millenials are often accused of doing — rightly or wrongly — in curating their possessions is closer to what I am interested in. I want the narratives, the stories, what people are thinking about themselves and their relationships and their lives as they arrange their environment Just So. Basically, I want a Dutch domestic painting to talk to me and explain itself.
This was not that. If my hostile and disappointed description of the book that Rabuzzi clearly put a ton of research and effort into sparks joy for you, let me know and I’ll mail my copy to the first person to request it. Otherwise, it’ll be donated in a week or two.
Because it does _not_ spark joy in me.
Yeah, I found the book on Amazon (bought it used in hardcover), basically based on the subtitle. I _still_ want a book that is a theology of housework, because if Marie Kondo can do it with Shinto, it ought to be do-able with other spiritual / religious systems and I want to see some alternatives.
So, so, so many problems with this book. The biggest problem is that it dates from that super precious period in early 1980s feminist academic work where they were using pretty much exclusively DWEM sources and struggling to be feminist at the same time.
It is a waste of time. The sooner you go, these people were _horrible_ and every sentence contains at least two identifiable factual errors (yeah, I’m looking at you, Aristotle), the sooner you can move on to something that isn’t a comprehensive waste of time.
A lot of Rabuzzi’s sources that are not ancient and Greek (pedophiles) were psychoanalysts. Enough said.
Rabuzzi is surprisingly dismissive of efforts on the part of other feminist academics of her time. When they went looking for suppressed women philosophers or psychoanalysts or historians or adventurers or whatever, she pretty much dismissed both the contemporary women doing the digging around in the archives AND the really super amazing women they turned up as suffering from ... wait for it ... False Consciousness.
Ahhhhhh. False consciousness. Haven’t heard that in a while, have you?
The book is rubbish. It’s not even that long and it took me years to finish, and I honestly wish I’d never found it. This thing is a train wreck, and one it was fairly easy to look away from. Larded with unconscious displays of economic elitism, racism masquerading as enlightenment, and a conclusion about mysticism and boringness that manages to simultaneously fail at being mystical or even really boring. It is downright fascinating in its misguidedness.
Every once in a while, she spends a paragraph on some interesting experiment with recursion in art, but then she manages to completely cock (yeah, I went there) up her analysis even of that.
So. Is there anything good here? There are the germs of all kinds of interesting things. Unfortunately, she brings them up, dismisses them, and then goes right back to Norman O. Brown or Aristotle or Hemingway (!) or Samuel Beckett (<— Ok, to be honest here I didn’t mind the Beckett references as much).
There are a lot of ways to think about the repetitive nature of housework. You can dream up something else to do with your time that is remunerative enough to justify hiring someone else to do it. You can get hammered enough so you don’t mind the repetitive nature of housework. You can get good enough at it that you can do or think of other things while doing the housework. You can treat it as a meditative activity. You can think of it as an expression of love for yourself, your family and a way to live a good life. They all sort of work, and they all break down occasionally (much like plumbing that, now that I think of it that way). I get a lot out of housework as a meditative activity, and as a life review activity, and as a way of completing things, and editing my life story. I really wanted a book that could sort of do that. Marie Kondo is more about creating an environment that supports a particular mood or emotional state. Not precisely what I am after! What Millenials are often accused of doing — rightly or wrongly — in curating their possessions is closer to what I am interested in. I want the narratives, the stories, what people are thinking about themselves and their relationships and their lives as they arrange their environment Just So. Basically, I want a Dutch domestic painting to talk to me and explain itself.
This was not that. If my hostile and disappointed description of the book that Rabuzzi clearly put a ton of research and effort into sparks joy for you, let me know and I’ll mail my copy to the first person to request it. Otherwise, it’ll be donated in a week or two.
Because it does _not_ spark joy in me.