25.2.20 Mary Douglas and disorder
‘Granted that order spoils patterns, it also provides the materials of pattern. Order implies restriction; from all possible materials, a limited selection has been made and from all possible relations a limited set has been used. So disorder by implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realised in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite. This is why, though we seek to create order, we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognise that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.’
Relating Douglas’ thinking to knitting, it’s easy, for me at least, to think that she’s discussing a knitting pattern when she uses that word. Conventional knitting, by definition, is well ordered – stitch by stitch, row by row, it’s perfect and finished. Following a printed knitting pattern for an experienced knitter leads to order; instead, I have no pattern, or maybe rather I follow a pattern through a stream of consciousness as I knit. In disorder the ‘potential for patterning is unlimited’, as Douglas says. I find it very exciting, that by subverting the expectations of knitting, it’s possible to bring meaning through disordered knitting. Disorder in my knitting is the abstract form, the sloppy knitting, the loose threads left unfinished and that often it’s also still on the needles, ie unfinished, or left to unravel. And Douglas says that this has potential for ‘both danger and power’.
Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 94.
‘Granted that order spoils patterns, it also provides the materials of pattern. Order implies restriction; from all possible materials, a limited selection has been made and from all possible relations a limited set has been used. So disorder by implication is unlimited, no pattern has been realised in it, but its potential for patterning is indefinite. This is why, though we seek to create order, we do not simply condemn disorder. We recognise that it is destructive to existing patterns; also that it has potentiality. It symbolises both danger and power.’
Relating Douglas’ thinking to knitting, it’s easy, for me at least, to think that she’s discussing a knitting pattern when she uses that word. Conventional knitting, by definition, is well ordered – stitch by stitch, row by row, it’s perfect and finished. Following a printed knitting pattern for an experienced knitter leads to order; instead, I have no pattern, or maybe rather I follow a pattern through a stream of consciousness as I knit. In disorder the ‘potential for patterning is unlimited’, as Douglas says. I find it very exciting, that by subverting the expectations of knitting, it’s possible to bring meaning through disordered knitting. Disorder in my knitting is the abstract form, the sloppy knitting, the loose threads left unfinished and that often it’s also still on the needles, ie unfinished, or left to unravel. And Douglas says that this has potential for ‘both danger and power’.
Mary Douglas: Purity and Danger. An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966, p. 94.
