Reflections on, and from, Feminist Practice: Introduction to the ‘Home’ Special Issue

ABSTRACT

Home is a vital site and subject for feminist research. This introduction to the special issue of Australian Feminist Studies on ‘Home’ begins by reflecting on domestic spaces and routines as they unfold through contemporary art and performance. This reflection maps home as both a material space and an imaginary: a complex realm of constraints and possibilities. The discussion on this complexity of home is then situated within the contemporary context of the gendered experience of housing, from its precarity to its porous boundaries, ideas which are engaged with throughout the special issue. Taken together, the articles in this special issue show how questions of creativity, care, labour and technology, all pivot around home as a significant and (still) politicised site for feminist thought. Research into gender, housing and homelessness, and human-centric ideas about home also provide key insights into home as an unfixed, relational and political space.

KEYWORDS:

• Home
• housing
• care
• art
• housework
• paid labour
• architecture

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).