Week 5 Reflection: Questions about Archiving
This form of resistance is interesting to me, but I also wonder where it falls short - especially when it comes to the archive. The fashion is a bodily performance and it consists of the material. Materials, as they are conceptualized by Chauvet, are a discourse of power. However, in the novel, it is quite tenuous because the power discourse over clothes or materiality is constantly being battled by a group that is perpetually underclassed. It is a temporary resistance - but a resistance none-the-less.
From this thought, I was led to think about archiving, documenting and otherwise collecting fashion and had a few questions:
- How do scholars, archivists, etc ensure that their collection of resistance fashion is contextualized. Of course, it can't just be a gallery, it has to paired with certain works and contextualization.
- How do you safeguard against appropriation?
- What is "worthy" of archiving?