Mode gegen Moderne
Lehmann, Ulrich (2012) Mode gegen Moderne. In: Mode: ein Kulturwissenschaflicher Grundriss. Wilhelm Fink, Munchen, Germany, pp. 23-55. ISBN 9783770553228
- Details
This peer-reviewed book chapter inquires whether fashion can yield innovative cultural contributions despite being implicated in the socio-economic structures of capitalism. In the decade since the publication of my book Tigersprung: Fashion in Modernity, academic discourse on fashion has increasingly taken up its focus on the structural significance of fashion's contribution to culture. The present essay, building on and extending my earlier work, engages specifically with the critical role of fashion in providing rhythm to the culture industry within capitalism.
My essay opens the anthology Mode: ein Kulturwissenschaflicher Grundriss, contextualising the positivist reading of modernism and its relation to (fashion) design. Fashion studies are at present dominated in Anglo-American academia by a mix of anthropological, sociological and psychological approaches, based on the combinatory methodologies pioneered by previous 'cultural studies'. This essay discusses fashion's potential without succumbing to the need of establishing formal relationships to more established cultural forms: it develops a materialist and structuralist methodology that goes beyond the existing interpretative canon of cultural studies, and provides new analytical ground for fashion studies.
Two versions of the essay have been written. The present output was published in the Spring of 2012 in an anthology edited by scholars in cross-disciplinary studies at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the Free University, Berlin. Another version is to be published in 2014 by the Centre of Fashion Studies, Stockholm University. Building on my recent lecture series at the Sorbonne, I also plan to publish a third (French) version of the above essay, in which I will engage with the recent philosophical discourse in France post-Baudrillard that has deconstructed and, I would argue, neutralised the critical potential for fashion. The English version of this essay was presented on 15 June 2012 at the Institute for Historical Research at University College London.
English translation of the title: Fashion against the Modern
The English version of this essay was presented on 15 June 2012 at the Institute for Historical Research at University College London.
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit View |