Entering the Contact Zone: Reflections on a Conceptual Framework Used to Study Brazilian Fashion
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2611-0563/9963Keywords:
The Contact Zone, Auto-Ethnography, Brazilian Fashion, My Positionality, Global Fashion Studies, Transnational Fashion HistoriesAbstract
This article reflects upon the critical framework – ‘the contact zone’ – used by the author in her recent book Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic (2018) to examine Brazilian fashion as a transnational form of modernity. This AHRC-funded project examined the visual and textual strategies by which the popular ‘scientific’ and educational journal National Geographic has fashioned an idea of Brazil in the popular imagination of its readership, but also, the extent to which Brazilian subjects represented in its pages can be seen to have self-fashioned, through the strategic appropriation and reinterpretation of clothing and ideas derived through transnational encounter and exchange. Mary Louise Pratt defined ‘the contact zone’ as real or imagined ‘spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination’.[1]Inherent within this space of contact are notions of friction or conflict played out in a militant area, or amorphous zone, in which the spatial and temporal presence of previously separate groups can be seen to interact. The contact zone provided a critical tool for the author to decentre her ‘foreign’ gaze – that of a light-skinned, European woman – onto Brazilian fashion. In conducting this research project, the author necessarily entered the contact zone, positioning herself in self-reflexive dialogue and debate with the range of different subjects that she came into contact with. The objective of this article is to ask, how might the use of the contact zone as a critical framework to examine Brazilian fashion be of value to other Fashion Studies scholars?
[1] Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. (New York: Routledge, 2008), p. 7
References
Andrade, Oswald. “Manifesto Antropófago.” Revista de Antropofagia, vol. 1, no. 1 (1928).
Andrade, Rita. “Mappin Stores: adding an English touch to the São Paulo Fashion Scene.” In The Latin American Fashion Reader, edited by Regina Root. Oxford: Berg, 2005.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Belting, Hans. An Anthropology of Images: Picture, Medium, Body. Princeton University Press, 2011.
Bhambra, Gurminda, et al. Decolonising the University. London: Pluto Press, 2018.
Bonadio, Maria Claudia. “Brazilian Fashion and the ‘exotic’.” International Journal of Fashion Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (2014): 57–74.
Braga, João and André Luis do Prado. História da Moda no Brasil — das Influências as Autoreferências. São Paulo: Disal Edita/Pyxis Editorial.
Brandini, Valéria. “Fashion Brazil: South American Style, Culture and Industry.” In The Fabric of Cultures: Fashion, Identity and Globalization. New York: Routledge, 2009.
Burks, Connie Karol. “Traceability and Responsibility: A Twenty-First Century T-Shirt.” In Fashioned from Nature, edited by Edwina Ehrman. London: V&A Publishing, 2018.
Carmo Teixeira Rainho, Maria and Maria Cristina Volpi. “Looking at Brazilian Fashion Studies: Fifty Years of Research and Teaching.” International Journal of Fashion Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (2018): 211–26.
Cheang, Sarah. Transnational Fashion History: Some Problems in Twentieth-Century Chineseness. Paper given at the Courtauld Institute of Art (June 19, 2017).
Cunha, Manuela Carneiro da. ‘Culture’ and Culture: Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Rights. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2009.
Da Silva, Ana Cláudia Suriani. “The Role of the Press in the Incorporation of Brazil into the Fashion System.” In Books and Periodicals in Brazil 1768–1930: A Transatlantic Perspective.
Darian-Smith, Eve and Philip Macarty. The Global Turn: Theories, Research Designs and Methods for Global Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2017.
Demos, T. J. Return to the Postcolony: Specters of Colonialism in Contemporary Art. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013.
Eicher, Joanne. “Introduction: The Fashion of Dress.” In Fashion, edited by Cathy Newman. Washington DC: National Geographic, 2001.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. “Multiple Modernities.” In Multiple Modernities, edited by Eisenstadt. London: Transaction Publishers, 2002.
Eisenstadt, Shmuel. “Latin America and the Problem of Multiple Modernities.” In Shifting Centres of Citizenship: The Latin American Experience, edited by Mario Sznajder, Luis Roniger and Carlos Forment. Leiden: Brill, 2013.
Garcia, Luz Neira. “The Centre of the Periphery in Fashion Studies: First Questions.” International Journal of Fashion Studies, vol. 5, no. 1 (2018): 95–110.
Hall, Stuart. Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices. London: Sage 1997.
Hollander, Anne. Seeing Through Clothes. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Jansen, Angela. “Decolonising Fashion: Defying the ’White Man’s Gaze.” Vestoj, (May 21, 2019), http://vestoj.com/decolonialising-fashion/
Kondo, Dorinne. About Face: Performing Race In Fashion and Theatre. London: Routledge, 1997.
Kutesko, Elizabeth. Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic. London: Bloomsbury 2018.
Lesser, Jeffrey. Immigration, Ethnicity and National Identity in Brazil, 1808 to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Lipovetsky, Giles. The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994.
Martins, Luciana. Photography and Documentary Film in the Making of Modern Brazil. Manchester: Manchester University press, 2013.
Mora, Emanuela, Agnes Rocamora, and Paulo Volenté. “The Internationalization of Fashion Studies: Rethinking the peer-reviewing process.” International Journal of Fashion Studies, vol. 1, no. 1 (2014).
Ortiz, Renato. “Popular Culture, Modernity and Nation.” In Through the Kaleidoscope: The Experience of Modernity in Latin America, edited by Vivian Schelling. London: Duke University Press, 2000.
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 2008.
Rushdie, Salmon. “Imaginary Homelands.” London Review of Books (October 7, 1982), https://www.lrb.co.uk/v04/n18/salman-rushdie/imaginary-homelands
Santiago, Silviano. The Space In-Between: Essays on Latin American Culture. London: Duke University Press, 2001.
Schwarz, Lilia and Heloisa Starling. Brazil: A Biography. London: Penguin, 2018.
Schwarcz, Lilia Moritz. Sobre o Autoritarismo Brasileiro. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2019.
Stepan, Nancy. Picturing Tropical Nature. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001.
Welters, Linda and Abby Lillethun. Fashion History: A Global View. London: Bloomsbury, 2018.
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2019 Elizabeth Kutesko
The copyrights of all the texts on this journal belong to the respective authors without restrictions.
This journal is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (full legal code).
See also our Open Access Policy.
