Notes on Bricolage

Bricolage- rules, constraints, limits. Not everything is at hand. Cultural innovation is constrained
to what is present. Endless process of creation within the constraints.

Bricolage in French, also carries the sense “to fiddle”

Pushes against essentialism and toward localized forms of becoming.

70s and 80s

Bastille – constraints and rules, looking at patterns (holes in memory that need to be filled);
take “white” practices to capitulate a “black” system of practices.
Certeau is about subversion of practices.

Postmodern - practices of individuals ; undertake the practices by themselves (personal and

individual). We do not look at patterns and constraints but at the playfulness and limitless
freedom of the bricoleur. (celebration of the individual… emancipation of the individual from
social norms and constraints).

Structure and agency (?) – structure doesn’t act on dead bodies… thus, structure is only
enacted through agency.
Certain resources have been made available to the bricoleur through a long historical
processes. Ambivalence with the resources that we are picking and mixing.