Embroidering Affects: Subjectivity and Barter in Women’s Networks

Abstract

This article explores the affects that emerge through the craft of embroidering among networks of women who self-identify as embroiderers. Our aim is twofold: first, we examine the subjectivities that embroidery elicits and how this practice reconfigures relationships in the worlds inhabited by these women. Second, we explore the exchanges constituted and propelled by different affects that take forms of barters located outside of commercial circuits. Methodologically, the paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork combining participant observation in collective spaces for embroidering performed both face-to-face and virtually, and the written testimonies of other participating women on how their life trajectories get entangled with embroidery. The research also included tracing and following embroidery making, circulations and exchanges as they were registered through Instagram stories. In both contexts we argue that affects are embroidered as substrate of singular lives while strengthening different forms of belonging in/through their exchanges.