Posthumanism in the Fashion industry: on human animals and cyborgs

Abstract

Since the second half of the twentieth century, disciplines as varied as cultural studies, anthropology, sociology psychology or gender studies have considered fashion as worthy of academic pursuit. Particularly important for the purpose of the present study are those perspectives which, grounded on a sociological approach to fashion and dress, examine the tripartite interconnectedness between dress, body and identity (Entwistle 2000). This study does not simply focus on dress as an individual practice; it also addresses the critical and creative discourses presentedby fashion designers in their runway shows, which are widely spread through social media in a cyber-mediated reality. In fact, as this study contends, inasmuch as it represents a system defined by incessant renewal, fashion is now echoing current ontological debates that call into question the barrier between the human and the nonhuman, and contemporary fashion designers are engaging creatively in the (re)creation of bodies that subvert dominant figurations of the human body. Among the designers that have challenged said barrier, Alexander McQueen (1969–2010) stands out for arousing raging controversies, which led the press to recognize him as the enfant terrible of the fashion industry. The present dissertation seeks to analyze the posthuman turn registered in Alexander McQueen’s fashion shows, where dominant figurations of the human body were often challenged through creations that hybridized, in an explicit and controversial manner, the human body with parts of nonhuman animals as well as with technological artefacts. InThis study intends to shed light on two different tropes crucial throughout McQueen’s career, and which destabilize the above-mentioned binary opposites: first, the feral woman archetype, which challenges the barrier between human animals and nonhuman animals; and second, the (re)creation of the cyborg, which defies the divide between human and machine. The study is divided into two main sections, with the first one aiming at laying bare the methodological apparatus on which the study is grounded –namely, posthumanism and fashion theory– and the second one being devoted to analyzing a selection of McQueen’s fashion shows.