Weaving as a technology of culture: a historical-cultural genealogy of textiles
The article is devoted to a philosophical and cultural analysis of weaving as one of the basic technologies of culture. The relevance of the study lies in the need to reconsider the traditional view of weaving as a primarily craft-based and utilitarian practice. The paper shows that textile practices played a much broader role: they participated in the formation of embodiment, everyday life, ritual boundaries, social distinctions, and symbolic orders. The aim of the article is to reconstruct the historical and cultural genealogy of textiles and to reveal its significance as a structuring medium of culture. The methodological framework combines historical-cultural, comparative-historical, and genealogical approaches, supplemented by a philosophical and cultural interpretation of archaeological, anthropological, and historical materials. It is argued that the origins of weaving should be sought in a broader complex of practices of interlacing, plaiting, twisting, and binding that preceded developed textile production. The article demonstrates that in ancient and medieval societies fabric functioned as a medium of power, status, memory, and social order, while in the modern and contemporary periods weaving became an important part of machine, media, and digital culture. The conclusion is that weaving should be understood as a form of cultural world-making in which the material and the symbolic are originally intertwined.
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