I’m getting into this book:
It’s got me with this from Haraway on the ‘cat’s cradle’ game:
Adopting the game of cat’s cradle, she underlines the possibilities of generating new thoughts, but also new ways of coming to matter through string figuration. Cat’s cradle is a game of producing string figures by passing loops of yarn between players. It is a practice of producing pat- terns with yarn. Further, she most popularly coined the game of cat’s cradle as an “everyday analogy” (Lykke 2010, 155) for the technofeminist analytical tool and methodology of diffraction. Haraway (2013, 1) takes the movements of the yarn to develop a method of thinking which she describes as in the following: “Relays, cat’s cradle, passing patterns back and forth, giving and receiving, patterning, holding the unasked-for pattern in one’s hands.” This description illuminates the ways in which yarn is a navigational tool, which one can follow, while at the same time, it is never possible to control the yarn fully and predict what will happen, how the yarn will form patterns of entangling and knotting. The yarn plays not a passive role in string figuring, but rather an active part.
I remember playing this with my sister when I was young, being amazed by the different patterns emerging, but only being able to get a few steps before getting in a table, but knowing there were more steps to do… I’m going to have to try it again!
