Maker discourses and invisible labour: talking about the 3-D printer
Date
2016-07-29
Authors
Coetzee, Anton
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Abstract
The technology of 3-D Printing is afforded extensive coverage in the media. Discourses surrounding
this technology are charged with ideas of revolutions in manufacturing, democratisation
of technology, and the potential to change the face of consumption and production.
This technology is being marketed to the consumer and hobbyist. The consumer-grade 3-D
printer is a result of the labour of a loose-knit worldwide community of hobbyists known
as the "Maker movement". This movement, a convergence of the traditional "Hacker" culture
and Do It Yourself (DIY) is constructed around ideas of affective labour. That is, labour
performed for the sole purpose of enjoyment of doing so, and for a sense of well-being
and community. The explosion of "affordable" 3-D printing as a technology is a result of
this affective labour, yet little mention is made of any forms of labour in popular media
discourses surrounding this technology.
In this paper I construct a history of the Maker movement while theorising the forms
of labour inherent to this movement using the Autonomist Marxism of Michael Hardt
and Antonio Negri as a framework. Then, working within the field of Cultural Studies,
and drawing on Actor-Network Theory (ANT), I perform Multimodal Critical Discourse
Analysis (MCDA) on a small sample of texts to illustrate the occlusion and obfuscation of
labour within these discourses of the consumer 3-D printer
Description
A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand,
Johannesburg, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
May 2016