How Textile Communicates

Ganaele Langlois is Associate Professor in Communication Studies at York University, Canada, and Associate Director of the Infoscape Centre for the Study of Social Media. Her research focuses on new media theory, software studies and technoculture.

Introduction: Textile as Communication
Winding Back
Textile as a Medium
Textile Making as Mediating
Textile Making and Power
Decolonizing Media and Communication
Book Overview

Part 1: Communicative Power
1. Unraveling Textile from Commodity to Communication
A Plural Medium
Textile as Communication Medium: Historical Pointers
Two Common Understandings of Communication through Textile: as Representation and Information
Towards a Third Aspect: textile as binding worlds through space and time
Global Textile, or Communication as Expressive Power
Textile, a Medium of Struggle

2. Quechua Textility
Pre-Columbian Textiles: Media and Power
Indigenous Identities in Contemporary Peru
The Revival of Quechua Textiles
Confronting Appropriation

Part 2: Technology and Imagination
3. Jacquard and the Creativity of Extensions
The Jacquard Mechanism, Automation and Digital Media
Weaving Digital Images
Weaving as Extension

4. Communicating Across the Abyss
Of the Meanings, Symbols and Patterns in Diasporic Textile
Mathematics, Rhythms and Signs
The Values of Making

Part 3: Transformative Entanglements
5. Reweaving the Interface
Domestic Textiles and Power
Marking Subjects
Reading through the Lines: The Evanescent Maker
Portable Technologies of Making
“Where Am I going?”: Creative Meandering

6. Kené, or the Promise of Unknowing
Shipibo-Conibo Textiles and Perspectival Anthropology
Kené in the Global Market
Delineating the Space of Unknowing and Potentials
Back to the Basics

Part 4: Cosmomedia
7. Cosmomedia - the Tale of Two Indigos
Cosmotechnics and Ecosophical Media
Combinations and Recombinations: Indigo dyeing and the making of worlds
Colonizing Indigo
Indigo and Collectives of Humans and Non-Humans
Japanese Indigo and Natural Dyes as Cosmomedia

Conclusion: The Shape of Things to Come