Of witches and textile artisans: scientific and technological trans-passages between materialities, spacialities, temporalities, and corporealities of the beyond; De brujas y artesanas textiles: tras-pasos científicos y tecnológicos entre materialidades,

Abstract

In this article, I invite you to imagine that a transhistorical thread crosses the Atlantic and links European witches with Latin American textile artisans. More than a comparative study, I propose a journey to fictionalize possible narratives about ancestry and knowledge. In such an imaginative gesture, craftswomen and witches are transferred with accumulated scientific and technological fibers and rituals, well known to both since ancient times. Interested in the knowledge beyond the academy, historical battles for life support, enchantment, and community ties are referenced. This speculation consists of three parts, for which I have put on feminist and gender lenses. First, I review the phenomenon of witchcraft in the European context from the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Then, I create a bridge between witch-hunting and colonization in America. Finally, I discuss some aspects of textile practices that involve knowledge and processes perhaps related to the women's knowledge in times when they were accused of witchcraft. Through a dialogue with Andean textile researchers, I express that handmade textile practices are current political resistance against androcentric and extractivist projects inherited from modern-colonial thought.