Page 245 - Več kot moda: onkraj oblačilnih, telesnih, spolnih, odnosnih in komunikacijskih ortodokcij.
P. 245
Summary
role in covering the body, more will likely be needed than a book in which
one author asks ‘how people do things with clothes (and vice versa)’ and
the other ‘how clothes do things with us (and make something of us).’ Still,
the present book can offer a daring if limited motivation for the clothed ev-
eryman and everywoman to renew their own views. The diametrically op-
posed questions – about what we do with clothes on the one hand, about
what clothes do with us on the other – asked by the authors only seems to
point to two entirely distinct and separate registers of the phenomenon:
fashion dresses and undresses; fashion embodies and disembodies; fash-
ion classifies and declasses; fashion collectivises and individualises; fash-
ion unifies and personalises; fashion essentialises and trivialises; fashion
naturalises and culturalises; fashion sets and subverts norms. Not only
are these processes antagonistic, they run in parallel: as we dress, we ex-
pose ourselves; as we dress for ourselves, we are drowning in dressing for
others; as we reject fashion as superficial, we really just reinforce our self-
deception as to our putative depths.
While what is at the forefront of the book is the act of playing with theo-
retical perspectives and playing on a range of interpretative positions, the
whole of this intellectual exercise does seem to actively invite the reader
to explicitly ask: why do I dress like I do; what would I dress up as if only
I dared; what am I actually dressed as when I get dressed; does clothing
make me or do I make clothing; do I dress for myself or for others; etc.?
In this book, you might find answers to questions you have never asked.
You might find answers to questions you have not been willing to ask. Or
you might follow up on the answers with more questions of your own. And
tomorrow morning you might be willing to wear something you wouldn’t
have ever thought of wearing.
How often are we really aware of how every day, as we throw on some
rags that are, in fact, our own – consciously or unconsciously, strategically
or mechanically – and hurry on with our day, this very act of manifestly
auto-producing the self actually turns us into walking representatives of
particular microcosms of the tiniest, ephemeral clothing gestures, as well
as, at the same time, walking heirs to vast worlds of the longest-lived
hegemonies. Thus, fashion orthodoxies are never simply and merely about
fashion, that is, about clothing, textiles, rags, surfaces, or coverings, even
if their dominant regimes largely take place on the surfaces of our bod-
ies’ skin. Hence fashion transgressions are never exclusively about fash-
ion either, even when they seem to predominantly serve to challenge or
transgress fashion orthodoxies. These transgressions are also about bod-
245
role in covering the body, more will likely be needed than a book in which
one author asks ‘how people do things with clothes (and vice versa)’ and
the other ‘how clothes do things with us (and make something of us).’ Still,
the present book can offer a daring if limited motivation for the clothed ev-
eryman and everywoman to renew their own views. The diametrically op-
posed questions – about what we do with clothes on the one hand, about
what clothes do with us on the other – asked by the authors only seems to
point to two entirely distinct and separate registers of the phenomenon:
fashion dresses and undresses; fashion embodies and disembodies; fash-
ion classifies and declasses; fashion collectivises and individualises; fash-
ion unifies and personalises; fashion essentialises and trivialises; fashion
naturalises and culturalises; fashion sets and subverts norms. Not only
are these processes antagonistic, they run in parallel: as we dress, we ex-
pose ourselves; as we dress for ourselves, we are drowning in dressing for
others; as we reject fashion as superficial, we really just reinforce our self-
deception as to our putative depths.
While what is at the forefront of the book is the act of playing with theo-
retical perspectives and playing on a range of interpretative positions, the
whole of this intellectual exercise does seem to actively invite the reader
to explicitly ask: why do I dress like I do; what would I dress up as if only
I dared; what am I actually dressed as when I get dressed; does clothing
make me or do I make clothing; do I dress for myself or for others; etc.?
In this book, you might find answers to questions you have never asked.
You might find answers to questions you have not been willing to ask. Or
you might follow up on the answers with more questions of your own. And
tomorrow morning you might be willing to wear something you wouldn’t
have ever thought of wearing.
How often are we really aware of how every day, as we throw on some
rags that are, in fact, our own – consciously or unconsciously, strategically
or mechanically – and hurry on with our day, this very act of manifestly
auto-producing the self actually turns us into walking representatives of
particular microcosms of the tiniest, ephemeral clothing gestures, as well
as, at the same time, walking heirs to vast worlds of the longest-lived
hegemonies. Thus, fashion orthodoxies are never simply and merely about
fashion, that is, about clothing, textiles, rags, surfaces, or coverings, even
if their dominant regimes largely take place on the surfaces of our bod-
ies’ skin. Hence fashion transgressions are never exclusively about fash-
ion either, even when they seem to predominantly serve to challenge or
transgress fashion orthodoxies. These transgressions are also about bod-
245
