Stitched in the Margins

This paper argues that textile practice, although marginalised as an art form in contemporary Western societies, can be a generative space for addressing the complex nature of subjectivity through consideration of the word “Selvedge”: Self+Edge.Drawing on Elizabeth Grosz's figure of the Mobius strip, which conceives subjectivity as the dynamic interplay of body into mind and mind into body, the paper proposes kantha stitching as creating a subjective space where the embroiderer, as she stitches, creates her world as her world creates her. Kantha can also be understood as a space of encounter, a site of becoming for women from different cultures, a space to stitch stories from the margins that are central to their lives.