My career in a nutshell: an autobiographical piece focusing on the myths of fashion

  

5-minute Presentation to

a Seminar on Justice and Design

University of Southern Denmark

23 September 2021

with Dr. Kat Sark

 

To review my career, I will focus on the theme of fashion’s myths. 

1.      The experience of ‘bumping into myths’ is something that I think we all share. Going to university we gain knowledge that changes our thinking. That is why we go to university. 

·      One of the most powerful moments during my undergrad in anthropology occurred when we were taught the definition of ‘ethnocentrism’ and learned that knowledge, and what seems self-evident and logical, may not be consistent with the facts. Culture is defined by what is passed down generation after generation. Myths are guardians of the status quo. Confrontation with the idea that the truths that I grew up with could, in fact, be myths was hard – but also exciting. Barriers in my thinking crumbled and I saw options for new directions.

·      I believe that we are living in a time when we must explode myths if we are to construct a sustainable future. We cannot continue with the status quo; there must be radical cultural change to bring us within the carrying capacity of our planet.

·      In retrospect, exploding myths has been a prime motivation for all of my publications on fashion. 

2.     As an anthropologist I do fieldwork among the Batak people of North Sumatra in Indonesia. Immersion in another culture has taught me to see my own culture through new eyes.

3.     I learned that colonialism split the world in two. From a substratum of diverse cultures, we collectively became:

·      Either the colonizer or the colonized; 

·      Either the Global North or the Global South; 

·      Either the developed or the primitive/uncivilized/un(der)developed/developing – all pejoratives used at different times

We are all either Us or Them. 

During fieldwork I, from the Global North, came in close contact with ‘them’, in the Global South and even started, to a certain extent, to identify with ‘them’. I learned that we had much in common but that history had forced us into positions of difference, even opposition.

·      I also learned, gradually, that the “Us – Them” dichotomy was operating powerfully in fashion studies. For example, it was once standard fare in fashion studies that style change through time was what distinguished fashion from other forms of clothing expression.  

·      In my N. Sumatran village, I had a EUREKA moment when I saw a creative weaver search for design inspiration from foreign textiles that she found on the markekt, and then invent new designs. Hey! Here was style change through time in an indigenous weaving tradition! Change was even a hallmark of that tradition! We had style change through time in common in our respective clothing traditions!

     In this way I learned that fashion studies have not always been objective; and the understanding of non-fashion has been based on biased preconceptions and not research. 

·      In 1993 I published Batak Cloth and Clothing, A Dynamic Indonesian Tradition, a history of dress of the Batak peoples. Through this book, I was saying that dress history is not exclusive to the West. Fashion History should be histories of dress: plural and diverse, one for each culture of the world.

·      In ‘Reorienting Fashion Theory’ my 2004 publication, I explored the pervasiveness of the us vs. them binary in fashion and fashion studies. Why would we want to perpetuate this myth of difference? Why is it so stubborn? I perceived that it has much to do with power and bolstering the sense of Western superiority.

                                           i.     Note how the designation ‘fashion’ implies that there is non-fashion, but at the same time conceptually ‘erases’ the relevance of the clothing systems of other peoples. This supports our sense of Western superiority – we ‘erase’ the evidence to the contrary. Think about that; it is a pernicious form of racism.

·      Racism in the fashion system goes much, much, much deeper than whether or not people with dark skin are represented in board rooms and on runways. It is bound up in the very definition of fashion. The essential divide between ‘us’ and ‘them’ is the fundamental myth on which all other myths are built. 

·      In my most recent publication: ‘Regenerative Fashion: There can be no Other’ I revisited the mythical dichotomy of West vs non-West in fashion because I perceived that this colonial-era dualism is even informing how we approach ‘sustainability’. We have been accepting the status quo, looking at material issues, and leaving out the matter of social justice, which, to my mind, should be absolutely central. 

·      I am so pleased that this seminar is highlighting this theme of social justice in design and offer my compliments to the instructors! 

·      It boils down to this:  

Where there is respect for other living beings, we will tread gently on the earth.

It is very simple, really: where we dehumanize and exploit, we will harm other beings and the planet. Hence I believe that respect is key. That means relinquishing dualistic thinking and learning to communicate across the reified divide.

 

My message to students today: It may be confusing and disorienting to bump up against societal and conceptual myths, but it is crucial to recognize them and to move forward on new understandings. 

4.     Hence my question inviting you to share the kinds of fashion myths or social myths that you have run up against. I believe that the uncomfortable discovery of these myths is an engine of both change and empowerment: 

·      The anthropologist, Ruth Benedict, once pointed out that “…no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.” Society – and the fashion industry -- run on the momentum of beliefs and norms. During the course of your study and life experience, have you ever been confronted with a conceptual ‘myth’ being perpetuated by the fashion industry? What is a good reaction to that discovery? In the end, we are not ‘trained employees’ and cogs in economic and social wheels; collectively we are the wheel, an insight that is empowering because it gives licence. 

 5.  That is why I am now a member of Fashion Act Now, and have chosen to become an activist at this stage in my career.

 

 

 

 

Indigenous Craft as Climate Adaptation and Mitigation

On Wednesday 25 August 2021, I presented a webinar for the PanSumatra Network for Heritage Conservation (PANSUMNET), an informal group coordinated by Hasti Tarekat within the Sumatra Heritage Trust / Beranda Warisan Sumatra (BWS). The event was moderated by arts and culture activist, Desmond W.S. Anabrang.

My goal was to bring the topic of global warming into focus relative to craft and heritage. On August 9 of this month, the 6th report of the IPCC report came out and was heralded as a 'Code Red for Humanity'. My talk was based on the comment made by Helen Clarkson, CEO of the Climate Group, that from now on,

“Every decision, every investment, every target, needs to have the climate at its core.”

So what does this climate 'code red' mean for heritage and craft? I proposed that this should become a focus of conversation and that it is incumbent on each aspect of heritage to work this out. UNESCO has already done significant work in this direction. It is all hands on deck. While the Northern Nations shoulder the burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG), I pointed out that there was a leadership role that could be assumed within Indonesia because of the wealth of Indigenous Knowledge that is found in the country -- and that this wealth should be treasured and encouraged, that this incredible asset is undermined by so-called 'development' and 'capitalist growth'.

My example was traditional Batak textiles, which I likened to honey: a valuable product collectively produced from the local environment, healthy and dependent on a healthy local environment. 

I showed the modernization of Batak textiles in the light of CO2 emissions and fossil hydrocarbons. If the traditional textiles were carbon negative (they stored CO2 in their materials and the weaving equipment), the modern textiles have been entirely transformed by the availability and prevalence of fossil hydrocarbons, through the use of synthetic dyes, yarns, and fossil fuel-based transportation. In the end, this has meant that the only 'heritage' that has been preserved is the appearance (design) of the textiles, not the material and not the systems which infused them with meaning before they became a 'cultural commodity'.

I placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of social changes that have occurred since colonialism and pointed out that the reliance on fossil fuels will have to be relinquished. 

There will be no choice.

The Webinar was live streamed on Facebook but the link cannot be used in this environment. 

A copy of the presentation will be made available on the BWS website.

Thanks to the talented MJA Nashir for the poster image and to the dynamic BWS and PANSUMNET for organizing and hosting the event. Thanks also to the warm, enthusiastic and very engaged Indonesian audience. 

You may access the zoom recording here.

Postscript, November 2021

I have just watched the recording of a webinar by Bill Rees to the Canadian Club of Rome, entitled 'Too Clever by Half, but not nearly smart enough: why societal collapse is increasingly probable'. William E. Rees is the brain behind the Ecological Footprint model that has caught on around the world as a way of measuring our impact on the earth. He showed a remarkable slide, which I screenshot and present here: 

If I have discussed the impact of the availability of fossil fuels on Batak textiles, this slide shows the macro impact on world population and economic growth.  No graphic could have better revealed that Batak textiles are in step with the world trajectory and out of step with the carrying capacity of the earth. 

This slide, if you can read the small print at the bottom, is "Based on estimates by the History Database of the Global Environment (HYDE) and the United Nations. On OurWorldinData.org you can download the annual data. This is a visualization from OurWorldinData.org where you can find data and research on how the world is changing."

I completed the Zuiderzee Route

 On Wednesday night I completed the Zuyderzee Route on my trusty bicycle. I spent 14 days at it and cycled 820 km. Starting and finishing in Nijkerk, traveling counter clockwise, I rode up around the East side of the lake, over the dike by bike-bus (alas, the dike is being renovated) and down the West side to Amsterdam, then skirted the South shore back to Nijkerk. 

 

I can’t complain about the weather. The skies were photogenically Dutch with scudding clouds topping the greenest of pastures studded with black and white cows and woolly sheep. The cool temperatures meant that I could keep covered up and safe from the sun. Only a few brief showers. Every day was more-or-less ideal cycling weather.

 

I think I experienced The Netherlands at her best. Physically, she is made for cyclists: compellingly flat with endless rivers, streams, tributaries, canals, (cantilever) bridges, dikes, ferries, lakes, and even open seas (on the day I cycled beyond the route to Harlingen). Church steeples in the panoramic distances, colourful fields, lots of ducks, geese and other water fowl,  history at every node. I could do the route ten times, no: fifty times, slowly, and still glean new insights. There were castles and museums, majestic VOC buildings, forts and moats, every kind of gable, local styles of water craft and marinas stuffed with yachts. There were patios where there was food and people made enthusiastic use of them. It was friendly, human-scale, carefree, and all were accepting of cyclists and understanding of our needs.

 

One of the things I liked most was plugging into the “Friends on Bikes” network. For a nominal fee, just to cover costs, kind bike-enthusiasts put up cyclists for the night. It makes bike travel simple and possible. Most of us are minimalist, independent types, with almost no baggage. Cycle, wash out the underwear, sleep, have breakfast and cycle on. The hosts know the routine from their own bicycle journeys. Six different hosts put me up in their homes. I spent more than one night in most so that I could dally and see the sights, and that made my trip delightfully sociable. Often there were animated discussions in the evening, and again over breakfast with other cyclists at the same address. Convivial and congenial. Many hosts were single women enjoying the company of cyclists just as much as I enjoyed the company of my hosts. I was struck by how gracious and kind they were. It wasn’t until I headed back in the train on that last night that I ran into mask-refusing grumblers and an obstreperous drunk. Maybe cyclists are just plain sane salt of the earth. This was community, trusting and kind. No bad apples on my journey.

 

During a rain shower, I discovered another network, that of ‘Rest Spots’  (https://www.rustpunt.nu). Run on the honour system, they are a commons, built on empathy. Places to have a drink, take a pee, charge up a battery, hide from a shower, or just be languid for a bit. Set up and cared for by volunteers and on their property. Absolutely endearing. This is what life everywhere should be like. Let’s expand the commons, share and trust each other! It generated such a good mood, such a sense of well-being, of belonging, of the world being our oyster. Who needs bitcoin? Give me this incomparable wealth, of ultimate value when the rubber hits the road. This is the Netherlands that one can’t help but love; I didn’t know that it was there all the time, ubiquitously between the lines!

 

Itinerary

 

Day 1: Oosterbeek to Zeewolde via Otterlo and Nijkerk 

 

Day 2: Zeewolde to Ketel Haven via Harderwijk, Nunspeet, and Kampen

 

Day 3: Ketel Haven to Ketel Haven via Kampen and the Ketelbrug

 

Day 4: Ketel Haven to Creil via the Ketelbrug, Urk and Lemmer over the dike

 

Day 5: Creil to Creil via Lemmer and Oosterzee – a day on the water 

 

Day 6: Creil to Makkum via all the little Fresian towns en route, including Stavoren and Hindeloopen

 

Day 7: Makkum to Makkum via Harlingen (seashore there, inland back)

 

Day 8: Makkum to Enkhuizen – via the Afsluitdijk, then Den Oever and Medemblik

 

Day 9: Enkhuizen to Enkhuizen – via Urk by sailboat

 

Day 10: Enkhuizen – a day at the ZuiderzeeMuseum

 

Day 11: Enkhuizen to Warder via Hoorn and Edam

 

Day 12: Warder to Warder via Purmerend, Monnickendam, Marken, Volendam and Edam

 

Day 13: Warder to Hoofddorp via Amsterdam (Vondelpark, Sloten and Schiphol)

 

Day 14: Hoofddorp to Nijkerk via Amsterdam, Muider, Naarden, Bussum and Bunschoten/Spakenburg

 

 

 

    

  

 

  

Decolonial Fashion Lament and the Call to Action

 As a Canadian, as a citizen of the world, as a person who went to school beside a Residential School, as an anthropologist, as a sentient person with a heart and social responsibility, I am feeling the pain of the indescribable discovery of so many unmarked indigenous children’s graves in Kamloops British Columbia. 

The remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves outside one of Canada’s largest Residential Schools. The First Nations children were essentially abducted from their homes and subjected to abuse, hunger and neglect at the residential schools. An estimated 150,000 children attended these schools across the country and thousands died there. The precise number will never be known. The residential school system, a collaboration between Government and Churches, was set up to educate, convert, and assimilate the indigenous population.

I feel the pain of this discovery increasingly intensely. It was institutional murder: planned, condoned and  silenced. The schools were a form of genocide. If you think about this long enough, it is unbearable. And the indigenous peoples of Canada have had to bear this knowledge for so long. It has been denied, misunderstood and ignored. Many reactions to the news of the unmarked graves also constitute denial. Such violence is excruciating to think; denial is an escape route. But we are learning, with dread and regret, that these will not be the only covered-up graves that will come to light. It is only the beginning of the discoveries. People are talking about the tip of the iceberg. The symptom of a much larger, red pool.

 

The discovery of the graves in Kamloops is a confrontation with “coloniality.”

 

The confrontation is hard. It is also necessary. This is what ‘decolonizing’ is about: confronting ourselves with the pain of coloniality. Exposing what has been erased. Airing the facts. Acknowledging the facts. Letting the silence turn into voices. Listening with compassion and empathy. Only this can open the door to repair, restitution, solidarity. This is the only true escape route, the only way to put the past behind us. Because otherwise it will live on, and the wrongs will continue to compound. Facilitating the silence is on-going complicity. 

 

What, you may ask, does this have to do with decolonizing fashion? 

 

I notice that many of the images used to depict the Kamloops discovery utilize the imagery of  dress: photos of those children before and after their attendance at the schools. The ‘befores’ are indigenous dress, the ‘afters’ are Western dress. 

 

Beaded gloves

It is no surprise, no secret, that Western dress was used as a primary image of ‘civilization’. This was done throughout the world; it is one of the hallmarks of colonialism. Dress is perhaps the most obvious symbol of cultural difference. Suppression of indigenous dress is not unlike the suppression of indigenous languages. At the Canadian residential schools both were forbidden. The children were alienated from their cultural roots by having these two things, both so intimate to a person’s identity, stigmatized and forbidden. ‘Fashion’ was deployed as a tool of suppression, a facet of denial, a way to silence; it was denigration of authenticity. It was a way to ‘civilize’ the ‘savages’ – and there was even the hubris that clothing them in Western garb was a favour to them.

 

Many of the current memorials and vigils to the children involve items of indigenous dress: moccasins for their little feet, and people wearing ceremonial garb. Indigenous dress is being used to extoll the cultural identity of those children, to restore them to their culture. Finally they are able to return home after having been torn away, often at gunpoint, so long ago. 

 

There are other responses on social media. One that hits home hardest for me, who has had a heartfelt need to abjectly apologize, is the reminder that these atrocities do not live in the past, but continue today in numerous forms. The struggle of Canada’s indigenous peoples is not over, not by a long shot. It continues in the form of trying to block oil pipelines from crossing their lands, of motivating the government to clean up their water poisoned by industry, of trying to obtain social and physical space to practice their culture, and airspace to speak their truths, break silences and recover their past. The list is long.  And it is also related to fashion. 

In a recent publication I pointed out that fashion not only feeds off intersecting sacrifice zones, but constructs its own specific sacrifice zone. 'Sacrifice Zones' are areas of the earth's surface deemed expendable for the sake of profits for the few. Fashion is implicated in oil pipelines, poisoned water, land confiscation and soil degradation, all of which are linked in one way or another to industrial fashion production. Fashion practices are implicated in the the silencing of indigenous culture and the erosion of indigenous pride. The social hierarchy that fashion displays also carries messages about racial discrimination. Indigenous dress is another sacrifice zone of fashion -- witness its almost complete erasure from 'fashion studies'.

 

There is a variant of ‘residential schools’ that has grown up in association with fashion production. They are called ‘Factory Schools’ (a petition against them is embedded in the link) where children are abused and their cultures obliterated. The misery that we all regret relative to Kamloops is on-going in the world. We, from the now dominant culture, are being told time and again by indigenous peoples that they don't need pity or apologies for what occurred in Kamloops (and by implication other sacrifice zones as well). They need solidarity to remove the policies and barriers that prevent them from flourishing. We need to stand with them to demand social justice.

 

Decolonial fashion praxis has extensive scope. It is not restricted to the work of designers and the recognition of their creations. It also pertains to the erasures and sacrifice zones implicated in fashion production and practice. Including the expendable little bodies dumped into the Kamloops graves.