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    161 views15 pages

    Daniel Miller (2009) Stuff. Polity Press. (Chapter 1)

    Uploaded by

    Lía Alvear Cossio

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
    Flag for inappropriate content
    of 15
    1 Why Clothing is not Superficial ‘When than my career a a adic, commited to the say of material eltre te dominant theory and proach to the Study of things was tharof semi, We were teu that the inet way to appreciate the woe of object aso conser the a5 signs ands symbol cha represeat The cram that was mot Commonly employed to ilseate shit perpen wan tha of Clothing, sine it seemed intel obvious tht me choos hth ing for precisely ths veason. My clothing shows that Ia 39, or Slovenian, of art or all hee. Thoogh the study ofthe ai ferentiation of hing we could embark pon the sey ofthe diferemaon of ws Clothn might epee ene terence, ‘nut ago clas, levels of edcaton, caters of trigin, confidence or fidence, ou ceapaional os as against or evening ase. ching wa a kind of prc langege that conde about ‘owe ae As sich, maternal things mere nected adn oo the tay of language” a apparently uaspoken frm of emt nation hcl cal ak velo one we had tied furs och capac. Aetbropolgial cus by Ms Dougls and Marital Shlins, stung others, tat advoeated this approach seme to suggest a whole new sgniance to the seady of wa “Therein dub tat material culare sas was sigicanty enhance by the arrival of this semiotic perpetuate it became 26 much a limitation av on acct Tine ion my Why Clothing is not Superficial B " pepudiate a semiotic approach to things in general and to elohing _[poticelae. Consider one of the bestkrown clothing store. [Mile Emperor's New Clothe is a morality tale about pretentious pss and vanity The Emperors persuaded by hs tailors thatthe {nhs they have stitched him are fine to the point of invisibly, fenving him ro strut naked around his court. The problem ith Semiotics is that it makes the clothes into mere servants whose faa it to represent an Emperor ~ the human subject. Clothes «do our bidding and represent us to the outside word. In them Salven, clothes ace prety worthless creatures, supecicial of tle onsequence, mere inanimate sus the Emperor, the elf that girs them such dignity, glamour and eefinement Bue what and where ie this self that the clothes represen? In both philosophy and everyday life we imagine that sere is areal ‘tre sof which les deep within us. On the surface is found the Clothing which may represent os and may feveal 2 eruth about Duraclves, bot ie may ako le. Its a though if we pecled off the ‘ute ayers we woudl Rally get tothe veal sc within. But what yas revealed by the absence of clothes was not the Emperor's inner self but his outward conceit, Actually, as Ibsen's Peer Gynt “observed, wear all onions. Tf you keep peeing off out lyers you find - abvoltly nothing lft. There i no true inner sell, We are rot Emperors represented by clothes, because if we remove the lothes thee ia an inner core. Te clothes were not superficial, they actually were what made ws what we think we are At Rist this sounds od, unlikely implausible or just plain weong. To. ‘scover the truth of Peer Gynt, as appli to clothing, we nea to tevel to Trinidad, from thereto India, and then to se these fexperiences to rethink our relationship #© clothing back in “London Trinidad? "The problem with viewing clothing as the sueface that represents, ‘or fails co represent, the inner core of true being is that we are then inclined to consider people who take clothes seriously as themselves superficial, Prior feminism, newspaper eartooas had few calm in showing women as superficial mecely bs portaying ithele desire to chow fon chues or drecees. Young black males were 4 Why Clothing not Superficial superficial because they wanted expensive tesiners that they were ‘at suppoted ta beable o afford. By contrast, we student aan ies at places such as Cambidge were deep and profound because frankly we looked rubbsh, and clearly didn't much care that we ‘id When met my wife as fellow stacens, my trousers were held tap ae the top with string and thee bem che base ith staples, She must have thought I was deep, because there certainly wast much to attract her on the surface. Such assumptions are fine within the confines of Cambridge But a peoblem for an antheo- pologist going out to Trinidad. Because the point of antheopelogy 15 to engute empathetialy into how other people see che Word Dismising them as uperficial would represent «rather disastrous start to sich an exercise, For Trinidadiansin general were devoted tw closhes, and Knew they were good a looking good. Colourfal Prints and butterfly bls were a priority. T worked much of my time in Trinkad wit squatters who had. neither @ water supply nor eletricey in the house. Yet women living in these squatters camps might have a dozen or twenty pairs of shoes, A common leisure activity was 0 hold fashion lisplay, on a temporary catwalk, along one of the open spaces ‘within the squatter encampment. They would beg, borrow, make for steal clothes Iwas just the clothes t was ao the hair the seventies and the way they strutted their stiff kong howto ‘walk sexy and to look glamorous beguiling, Movements Were hnased on an exaggerated self-confidence and a strong erotic, with striding, bouncy, or dance like displays. In local parlance there should be something bot about the dothing and something hot about the performance-On evenings Lexuld spend thee hours wich them, waiting as they got themselves ready to Ro out aed perey ying oa and discarding outs uni they go righ This association is hardly nev for the egion. Early acounts of slave society inthe Caribbean include references o the particular ‘devotion of slaves to clothing. A. C. Carmichadl stated in 1833 “Generally speaking, the coloured women have an insatiable passion for showy dresses and jewels...The highest class of females dress more showily and far sore expensively than European ladies.” Fri, carrying out ethnographic resexech in an impoverished village in 1957-8, reports, the wile of one of the peasants said “every new function needs new closes. I wuld not wear the same dress to two functions in the same distriet”** This Why Closhing isnot Superficial as este was sill more forcefully expressed during the 19706 oil boom in Tinidad when both sarstresses and thee lent sg eve that purchasing ewo new outs a weak was quite common foe women in work, We do not necessarily condemn a population just because they show some devotion to stuff. Anthropologists talebate, rather than demean, the devotion of Trobrand Islanders fo canoe prows or ofthe Nuer to cate. But curiously a devorion to clothing, as one can see from these descriptions by outiders, tras always viewed rather more harshly, especially for those srthout weal. ‘As evident in the description ofthe loal catwalk, what mostly ‘concerned Tenidadians was aoe fashion ~ that i, the collective following oa tend, buestyle—thatis, the individual construction ‘ofan aesthetic based not just on what you wear, But on how you. ‘wear it. There used to be aterm saga boys for men who combined ‘Srtovial odginality with ways of walking and talking that never let up from conspicuous display. Another local term gallerying set just right. "Trinilad style, in turn, has two eoreporents, incivialism and transience. The indivslal has to re-combine cements i their oven way. The soure ofthese elements is unit portant. They may be copied from the soap operas or the fashion Shows which appear on television, sent from relatives abroad oF purchased wile abroad. They may simply re-combine local pro ‘ets at the various elements should work together, be spproze- ae tothe person who cartes them off well, for ideally just one particular occasion. Ir didn’ matter whae clothes costo even ‘whether the clothes worn on the catwalk belonged to them oF were boreowed for the occasion. This wasnt about accumlation, bur about teansience, The alist may leaen from fashion but only asthe vanguard. Then they must move op Trinidad’ best known Cultural expoct, Carnival, enshrines this transience. Individuals may spend weeks, if not months, creating elaborate and time- consuming costumes. But these mast be discarded and remade Snnually. What is celebrated i the even, the moment. "There. are many posible reasons why Trnidadians might have developed this affinity with syle as individual and transient expression. Some theories go back to slavery and heyond. Hensy ‘Lewis Gates ia his book The Signifying Monkey argue for 2 West Aiican aesthetic structute found especially amongst the Yoruba.? ecole eee ee ee hee ed thon, 16 Why Closbing ie not Superficial bur very often eetuen toa pastiche of wellknown sythms and ‘ins rom previous compotion. ordinary spec both a Sian and others lef Sigma pom someone or sme thing, One ean se a similar use of clthing in the development of eegueng made fons by Manna ad the fin Paris ‘rg, which ete ling. nd high fashion na silane crea manne. Bat Tiida loin ye doc eter fo Clerc themes inhi wy. ‘aeratve might bet look, motto some agin in Africa, Butta the experience of slavery isle The iden of keping hing fom the surface as a dense ste ant the condition ot tree degradation is bilaely depicted ty Tont Moo in ter nel Beloved “0 you protttel youre ad loved small Picked the net sar ont ofthe sy to om Athi bigs sould do, A wane thera igen that would {plc you wide open in Aled Gaceia™ The precarious existence ven by the condition of svery pes ay intertatzation of lovey sine there was no kncwing when thi ove object igh Be ‘erste vay routing in 2 kindof adaptive tendency to ep thing onthe aca, refuse sy iteration aod sf minimise ones seme of lst. Thi move plasie andy remain relevane to many of thse inthe ageing aes Butte tlpriy ofthe population of Tinidad not hove ergs in Afra and avr. Many come rom Seth Aaa‘ have mined backends. So, isa of eying t sk whee sich 4 eationship eo spe comes rom instead of soi 38a problem tha eqs expla ‘ton, in trn he leaback nto ome, Why do we think ‘hac a devotion to closing i problem anyway? Why do we sce its sign of super and wha does she ery test spe fciatty ph? The problem with a theory of semoncs and of resin clthing a supefal thc we presume tertain rl onaip between the tesor andthe exter, We posses what tou be called dep ontology. "The ssunpton i that bein hat we tay are lcd deep ise curls aah direct oppston to the surface. A clothes shopper is tallow Iceause a phlonpher oasis dep, The sa core to the sk israel constant and unchanging dao vrespocsve 0 there crcomatance, We have to look dec nse ourseles fd mete sircmurance Wie have fo Took deep inside ourselves 10 Bad Why Closhing is mot Superficial v ‘ood and bile, not philosophical certainty. We won' fi & soul by cutting deep ints someone, though I suppose we aight ace enclly release it. My point that there is simpy no reason on tarth why another population should see things his same way NNo reason at all why they should consider our real being co be hep inside and falsity on the outside, The argument here is that ‘Tinidadians by and lage don't. In stark conteast to this depth ontology Trnidadians seem to have almost a horror of things becoming iterioized, ather than kept on the surface, Pecheps the most popula lesuee activity in ‘Trinidad isthe Lime, in which a group of people ether hang around a seat comer of travel in a group, for example, into the countryside to mate a cook. A feature of the lime is the ‘gence of verbal insult which is known as picong or giving fatigue ‘The individual failings ofa fellow liner woul then be picked ‘upon. An older male might be asked "when you alive yet, you could cook?" or about whether any remaining hae swell his ‘An accident or mistake might be theown back at the ‘guilty party many times, with appellaions such as ‘mothercunt’ Such picong’almos always. remains. good hamosred, because the fecipient knows that they are being judged by their ability not to fake this on. This often vty and always barbed invective between friends makes the lime a kind of training groand in which one is steed against taking in the abuse which ean be received in life. There ia version of madness called tabu This afflicts people not Because they have lost a relationship, bor because they then discover that they allowed that elation ship wo getinside them, and when it ended they became dieractd and disorientaed. One of the most common expressions hear inrespoase to any misfortune, from a passing insu the brea tip ofa relationship, is dab {don') take it om. In other words inppying doa’ take i in ‘Most Tenidadians would cersinly assert humour and wit 35 central to thee self-definition and would se i a8 contebuting eo their sense of cool and syle. A person without a sense of humour, who can't take insults, i sen as ignorant and prone to violence, 2 label Trinidadian use oftheir Caribbean rivals, the Jamaicans, ‘This keeping of things on the surface algo means the feeder tO construct oneself and not be categorized by circumstance. Ia London when two middle-class people meet they tend to ask each 18 Why Clothing is mor Superficial ‘other ‘and what do you do? ~ meaning their employment. Bet ‘most Trnidadians consider this highly inappropriate. One works Simply eause one needs to eat money x0 this i entirely the ‘wrong source of self-definition. Asking what work someone docs tells you nothing significant about them. It is the things one choores freely t0 da that should define you, not he things you hhaveta do, Fresdom in slf-construction seems central, Tes again at Carnival tha one comes to appreciate the further implications of not seeing the essential nature oe tath ofa person a8 a property located deep within. One of the main themes of Carnival is the revelation of euth. Carnival starts at aight with a festival called Jousert derived from the French jour d ouvert of the opening ofthe day. People dees as creatures ofthe night, such asdevis, or come out covered in mud (London's Noting Hil has ‘an appeding variant: covering your body in chocolate) Somesimes they earty placards with scandals and accusations. Gradvally they mote towards the centre of town vehere they ate revealed By the dawn. In 1988, one of the most striking costumes represented a current calypso and was called Bacchanal Woon, A huge figuee wore a dress festooned with eyes. Bachan is the disorder that follows scandaloas revelation. The classic example i where 3 strict schoolteacher has tied to portray herself as thoroughly respectable, ual a pregnancy reveals something else going on People try constant not to reveal the truth about themselves bat Carnival rings the chings of the night inco the light of revelation, ‘The poin allthis makes about lies is that people ate constantly trying tohide them, And where ithe obvious place to hide things? ‘Well, deep insle where ther people cat sce them. So the truth that emerges at Carnival i premised on exactly the opposite set ‘of meraphors as that of our own depth ontology. For Trinidadian jvis eauely obvious thar eruch resides on the susface where othee people ean easily se it and atest toi while is are to be found the hidden recesses deep within. A person's eal being, then is also on the surface, and evident. ‘The deep person, who keeps things stored close ro himself or herselt and out of view, viewed as just dishonest. The point, of course, is that truth is neither {nvensiealy deep nor on the surface. Nether set of metaphors can be judged a right or wrong, ei simply that there i no reason ‘why any other population should have a concept of supericiality Why Clothing isnot Superficial 9 “which sees che deep inside as tre and significant and the surface {sale and insignificne. In many ways che Tenidadians seam faves rather more obvious ogc of spatial metaphors of truth and being thas we do Tho ference in metaphors refecing diferencs i the concep® of being, may use idioms of time as well as of spac. the sli noe dep iid ep also noe viewed as constat. We sce the soll as growing, based on things that are accumlaed, So ‘occupation, socal status and position ereate substance which is ‘Kcumtlated within, This comes fom a historical prelerence for felativcly fined identities and hierarchic, In earlier mes a peeson twas defined by bieth. We now peeler an apparently meritocratic “ea! which defines them more by cumolatve achievement. But “Tinidadians may not be aiming for such a sense ofan incremental self, which would be regarded as both false and imposed by pos- tion, A person today should not be judged by what they used to bes but what they ate now. lastead we have to imagine astoaion in which being is constantly re-creaed chrovghh « rrstgy of Alsplay and the response ofthat moment. In going to party OF forming « relationship, the individal wsually aims igh. They atrempe the best stl, the wittist verbal agty and, if possible, the shoe impressive partner. But one only Binds out if this i act ally who you ate from the response ofthe days haw people react to you and appraise you. leis each particular and assumed tran- sien activity that tll one stho one iT isthe event itself that tives judgetnene. However, chi sony a specific event or relation: thip, so tha the position has to be recovered again on the next "The advantage of «transient sel is that iti less subject co insttaional construction and judgement. It is noe given by for ‘mal recognition oF occupatios. This means that comparatively speaking tis a self chat can fel free ~ which for Trinidadian is tantamount t saying it is more real or truthful. Men and ‘women prefer to je the state of thei relationship by che way they treat each other at that time. They are suspicious of the ‘way an institution, such as marrage, can lead to one side taking the other for granted, and no longer having to make constant {he attention chat sigifes thatthe relationship eemains true. For “Trinidadiens, marsiage as an sestittion can easily make a rela tionship falee, since one can mistake ite formal nature for ite 2» Why Closbing is noe Superficial realty, which lies inthe actual way each treats the other i the present. This is one reason why people prefer co wait for mar rage until they are very established in ther relationship, often swith several childeen “There i a problem with the kind of historical determinism whic always explains the preseat bya search for roots, by a nat Fatve of howe people goe toe as we now ind them, Socal selenee tends ro be more concerned with how things connect up with each ‘ther today. The past ha certainly made is conriion,Pethaps ‘the huge emphasis Trinidadians pue on fredom, the Freedom to coustructchemselves through syle, eather than being defined by ‘ceupation, docs indeed show a influence fra slavery. The past experience of oppcession might puta premium on freedom today, Bat anthropologists prefer to see things in comparative perspec: tive, looking for analogies in other societies, Anthropologie ‘writing about Papua New Guinea, for example, hare argued that, there too, people prefer to judge by appeatunces.” Members of ‘community parade and dance for considerable period in front of ‘others. By doing so, not only can the observers sce how cobesine they are currently as group, bat also the individuals doing the parading see, in the eyes of those judging them, who they actualy fare, Have they ben able o look good as individuals andl coesve 836. group? My seas is thar populations who are relatively egali= {arian prefer metaphors which sugges that people are to he defined by thete curren abilities and achievements; that they should lose that achieved position wien those abilities wane. I Iollows that they tend to see tcuth and being as on the surlae. By contast, strongly enenched societies with long histories of insticationali- "ation, whether of cass or positi, tend to see being and truth as deep within che self and relatively constant, In such a context clothes do not just mean something quite Aiferents they ate something quite differen. In these egalitarian Societies, they are the very forms by which one can discover who fone actually i. It chen makes a great deal of sense to spend ther more time being canceened with how one locks, if how one looks is who one is. Nota reflection of who one is, but actually who ‘one is. Our own notion of being 2s depth hat some surprising consequences For example, we hive thievery peculiar ideal about looking natural, which tends to imply that putting an make-ap and clothes is false and superficial, Bat whe should we assume Why Closbing is not Superficial en | his? Why should he face chat one person has feces el us wha they are? Or that one person is born wee than another person, land so-can portay evil or a debased character on the stage? We Se the natural just lke the deep as being the crush ofa person. ‘The Trinidadian conception, by contrast, is that who we are is sot at all given by the happenstance of physiognomy ~ our face IWhen we wake up in the morning. Why om earth should the Drtural look of a person be'a guide to who that person is? By ‘anerst, a person who spends time, money, tate and atention in evestng a look, where the final look isthe direct result of all thar activty and effort can properly be discovered in their appa face, Because now one is jing whac they have done, not what they happen wo lok lke originally. We are jdging them by thei laboue, not eeir birth. One aspees by the act of slf-cltivaion ‘Other people ean then sce if you areal that yo lat thereby to bbe, ori actualy you ae clearly not up t thar mack, "Trinidad isa stret corner society whete such failures are going to be commented upon, often within a few hundred mettes of ‘eeting out from your house. People lve to pronounce in public ‘upon hove anther person looks. Bat again, i we push ourselves ‘beyond our usual metaphors, we can See thar cis can make pee fecty good sense. Tenidadians do label people ax plumbers oF lawyers, rch or poo or for that matter black or white, bat repac this as supecfeial, compared to a judgement as 0 how they have constructed themselves, whether they can strut thei stuff. My Jncenton isnot really to favour one view of being over the othe, although its hard not 9 see the Trinidadian view as rather clearer land more consizent than our own. The coneequcnce, for present purpones, i that when Trinidadans spend far move attention on lothing, and make ie move of a peioity in thie lives, they are ‘ot being deluded or more facile "This ise case stay also provides clear illustration s wo what | mean when Ielaim an ambition to be sn extrait. We goto at island in the Caribbean and find that there is a relationship to clothing unlike anything we had imagined. But we achieve this ‘understanding through an extreme parciculaism. Anthropologists tan always become sill more parochial if we choos. Its some thing we do with relish because i proves our scholarship. Only alter living there fora year could Tetart to understand the diver- ‘chy of Trinidad itself, By then even the general term Trinidadian 2 Why Clothing is not Superficial looked spect, Boose the people Lam dealing with are Ido ad Ato bissho and ras-fots, men and wore ely ad shikrn Actuals hey are Jonas and George, Sine spd Roa, Exhnography is «devotion to the partes, what was Seca about hse individual peopl thi te, Ye co understand ene tiny microcosm ofthis population — why impoverished women had s many shoes “one needed sa increas haste son cal assumption abou whist be human eed cules ‘ur fundamental theory of emtloy, that iy the philosophy of tring, o expose the asunprions me make about where beg it located and the mulipcy of metaphor and assumptions that few nal directions fom the presumpion tha bing dee. "We thereby gain an appreciation tha what we had same bea universal was fell particular, That onsogy i cull onstruction atl ota inherent ret, Bat denoting te foun chains of Westen pioxophy in ode fo understand ipower ‘sh Tinidadian women reins ot shoe ese as enicly worthubile Te juste the supe to bring the wo ‘xtemes of univenalisn and particulars back imo covers thon with each ater. After al, the ais of anthropology unde Standing tthe see of empty. Usippore Lm loa ying ‘inant mae ie oben ht ss, eisanother exon for starting wah chs parca example ‘The point made beers to more than jus Cohn, The erm supetiility and the asomptions we make abou where beng is Toate form pate of a much larger denigration of materia

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