FACE VALUE
The clothing practices of diasporas in metropolitan cities of industrialized states – so often assumed to be congruent with histories of ‘national origin’, representative of a culture and tradition removed, in a faraway place – prompt an examination of clothing as a vehicle for the performance of ethnic identity.
Undressing the diaspora, therefore, is a proposal to look beyond diasporic populations as assimilated immigrant communities, singularly narrated through the structures of first world states. By playing with the supposedly stable structural entities of nation, culture, and ethnicity, diasporic dress responds to seamless state narratives that position ‘ethnic’ peoples as authentic vessels of their ‘native’ cultures – perfect representatives of a more ‘global’ community.
In the wake of intensified attempts by the coloniser’s government to reproduce technologies and taxonomies of racial order, the diasporic dress of ethnic individuals raises a spectre that problematizes the convenient narrativization of the multicultural migrant state.
We are the EXILED ORGANISATION.
The Plagiarist, ‘22-‘23