Decentering Bodies
TEXTILE Cloth and Culture: Special Edition
Decentering Bodies
Photograph by Max Kandhola The familial gathering of generations I. 2024
Decentering Bodies: FACE X TEXTILE Cloth and Culture
We are inviting researchers, academics, artist and designers to contribute to a special edition for TEXTILE Cloth and Culture Journal.
"Decentering Bodies" is a framework that critiques and challenges dominant cultural ideology, particularly Eurocentric beauty ideals, while advocating for the psychological and social empowerment of historically marginalized communities. It calls for decolonizing beauty standards to foster a more inclusive narrative that accounts for the ways race, class, gender, and colonial histories shape identity and self-perception. The approach ultimately seeks a radical redefinition of beauty and identity. Aligned with this framework, we are interested in articles that focus on research in textiles, particularly those that examine the broader cultural and social roles textiles play. These articles would contribute to an academic forum that explores how textiles intersect with identity and empowerment, framed within a decolonized and inclusive perspective for all those who share a multifaceted view of textiles within an expanded field.
Guest Editors:
Max Kandhola is Associate Professor in photography, Design & Digital Arts (D&DA) at Nottingham Trent University - (FACE Council Member)
Sharon Lloyd is Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Equity & Inclusion, London Metropolitan University - (FACE Co - Founder)
Davina Hawthorne is Senior Lecturer and MA Programme Lead for Fashion and Textiles at De Montfort University - (FACE Council Member)
Callout: 2000 – 5000, word essay to include images. Up to Ten images (images to be high res 300dpi - WeTransfer) per essay by 18.00 BST, March 30th 2025, all essays will be peer reviewed – email word documents to Davina Hawthorne
Aims and Scope of TEXTILE Cloth and Culture
Cloth accesses an astonishingly broad range of human experiences. The raw material from which things are made, it has various associations: sensual, somatic, decorative, functional and ritual. Yet although textiles are part of our everyday lives, their very familiarity and accessibility belie a complex set of histories, and invite a range of speculations about their personal, social and cultural meanings. This ability to move within and reference multiple sites gives textiles their potency.
This journal brings together research in textiles in an innovative and distinctive academic forum for all those who share a multifaceted view of textiles within an expanded field. Representing a dynamic and wide-ranging set of critical practices, it provides a platform for points of departure between art and craft; gender and identity; cloth, body and architecture; labour and technology; techno-design and practice—all situated within the broader contexts of material and visual culture.
Textile invites submissions informed by technology and visual media, history and cultural theory; anthropology; philosophy; political economy and psychoanalysis. It draws on a range of artistic practices, studio and digital work, manufacture and object production.
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