Article – Eleonora Chiais, Lorenzo Maida (2020), Dall’inspired by Africa al made in Africa: l’afro-couture vista da occidente (in “Echo. Rivista interdisciplinare di comunicazione”)
(2020) Dall’inspired by Africa al made in Africa: l’afro-couture vista da occidente
Vestimentary choices are vehicles of identity because they create (and influence) the mechanisms of self-representation. When such choices acquire a global dimension, both the will to represent (intentio autoris) and the will to represent oneself (intentio lectoris) take on a central role in the daily discourse of fashion by drawing from the wardrobe of an “other” culture. The case of the so-called “African Fashion” is illustrative in this sense and allows us to question the concepts of “colonialism” and “coloniality” by observing how, over the years, the two terms have been central in generating both a western perception and a western esthetic of Afro-couture.
The full version of the article is available here.
NeMoSanctI is a research project carried out at the University of Turin. It studies how models of sanctity have changed after the Second Vatican Council. To this end, it applies a pioneering methodology based on semiotic theory to a wide corpus of normative, judicial, and narrative texts.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 757314).
