TY - CONF
T1 - A Desire to be Someone?
T2 - 15th International Deleuze and Guattari Studies Conference and Camp
AU - Breuer, R.L.A.
N1 - Rebecca Louise Breuer is a senior lecturer and researcher in cultural philosophy at the Amsterdam Fashion Institute, which is part of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. She holds a PhD and wrote a dissertation titled Fashion Beyond Identity. The Three Ecologies of Dress in which she argues that a heterogeneous perspective upon fashion may help solve the industry’s current problems. She also coordinates and lectures in the honours programme into fashion theories. Her current research interests are in the field of immediate experiences of the body, clothing and technology. In addition, she has obtained a grant for educational innovation and she is researching how object-based learning may connect theory and practice for fashion students.
PY - 2023/7/12
Y1 - 2023/7/12
N2 - The spaces of control in which we shape and communicate our identities are no longer solely physical, neither situated in place and time. Nowadays, these spaces are mainly located in online platforms, ranging from Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to fora like LinkedIn or Reddit, where we meet one and another and share who we are. These spaces, however, do not exist nor operate by themselves but are connected to an ever expanding and mostly invisible network in which companies track us and mine our personal data when we are online. As a result, and through the usage of algorithms, these companies manage to emphasize a feeling of lack and, consequently, manage to fuel our desire for being fashionable, for instance. We then fill the lack we experience by buying clothing, shoes and accessories that represent our identities both off- and online. This seduction to shop for subjectivity is problematic for three reasons, the first one being the environmental destruction of our planet; the second one the social inequality between the buyers and the makers of apparel; and the third reason is that it limits our experiences to representation and being. A space of resistance to these practices may be found in contrasting the Freudian concept of desire as lack with the Deleuzeoguattarian concept of desire as productive, positive and creative. This conceptual desire was always there, comes first and can help to change and free our mental ecology from wanting to be someone through the clothes we wear, to realising it is not the item of clothing we desire, but “the aggregate of the skirt, of a sun ray, of a street, of a woman, of a colour… constructing an assemblage, constructing a region, assembling”. Once we have adjusted our mental ecology, the social and environmental ecologies may follow.
AB - The spaces of control in which we shape and communicate our identities are no longer solely physical, neither situated in place and time. Nowadays, these spaces are mainly located in online platforms, ranging from Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook to fora like LinkedIn or Reddit, where we meet one and another and share who we are. These spaces, however, do not exist nor operate by themselves but are connected to an ever expanding and mostly invisible network in which companies track us and mine our personal data when we are online. As a result, and through the usage of algorithms, these companies manage to emphasize a feeling of lack and, consequently, manage to fuel our desire for being fashionable, for instance. We then fill the lack we experience by buying clothing, shoes and accessories that represent our identities both off- and online. This seduction to shop for subjectivity is problematic for three reasons, the first one being the environmental destruction of our planet; the second one the social inequality between the buyers and the makers of apparel; and the third reason is that it limits our experiences to representation and being. A space of resistance to these practices may be found in contrasting the Freudian concept of desire as lack with the Deleuzeoguattarian concept of desire as productive, positive and creative. This conceptual desire was always there, comes first and can help to change and free our mental ecology from wanting to be someone through the clothes we wear, to realising it is not the item of clothing we desire, but “the aggregate of the skirt, of a sun ray, of a street, of a woman, of a colour… constructing an assemblage, constructing a region, assembling”. Once we have adjusted our mental ecology, the social and environmental ecologies may follow.
KW - Desire
KW - Dress
KW - Identity
KW - Overconsumption
KW - The Three Ecologies
M3 - Abstract
Y2 - 10 July 2023 through 12 July 2023
ER -