Paper short abstract:

As part of a larger project on craft as ontological training for attending to “neglected things," I theorize two intersections of craft and care, noting the importance in repair work of caring for craft, but also the ways in which repair crafting is itself care work.

Paper long abstract:

In response to resilient philosophical tendencies to privilege disembodied concepts known by rational minds and to ignore material knowledges, in this paper, I centre repair practices as sites of deep if marginalized intimate knowledge about material reality (ontologies) that offer important openings for thought, clarification, and conceptual work. As part of a larger project on craft as ontological training for attending to “neglected things” (Puig de la Bellacasa), and by taking up the “biography” of objects (Kopytoff in Appadurai), I offer two related ways of thinking about the intersection of craft (techne) and care, noticing the importance in repair work of caring for craft, but also the ways in which repair crafting is itself care work.

I begin by thinking with Newfoundland artist Pam Hall’s careful questions about craft knowledge – of mending nets, fixing boats, knitting mittens – in the harsh North Atlantic: “What is this? Who made it? How? Where did it come from? How did it get here? How is it used and by whom in what season?” Such knowledges show up as deeply ontological and not only practical when we read them in the context of the crafting-caring-knowing-attending nexus in the specific form it takes in situations of repair work. I conclude by suggesting that attuning to craftwork and repair as tending with care can reorient critical STS practices to the demands of our material relations, toward concretely being and doing better with and for others.