Dissertation
Dressing wounds and healing justice: A journey of individual and national transformation
Washington State University
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
05/2010
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.7273/000006211
Abstract
What can clothes cover and shield? What do they announce and proclaim? The cloth is not alone in this communication; there are bodies attached. The interpretation becomes a collective process in public view, but this does not negate the very personal connection every body has with its own representation. Wounds of signification are often displayed simultaneously as a sense of empowerment and recognition of injustice; as a critique of policy and as a cry for change; as an individual display of beliefs and as a challenge to national boundaries. This project explores the power of clothed bodies and exposes the individual and national wounds through their processes of healing justice. What I am intrigued by is the process of selection, punishment for violations and subversion that occurs on the national stage as a result of local and individual acts. I am interested in the meanings behind the "look policies" as Abercrombie & Fitch likes to call them and how similar types of policies are implemented to (re)define national identity. Identifying the body as a potent example of visual culture (Fuery 53), I focus on clothing and the body and the ways in which the visual (perceived or actual) impacts and transforms notions of belonging over time. In analyzing multiple case studies from the 19th to the 21st century, the pattern of how the body negotiates its visual displacement reveals the space where visual culture, social (dis)order and public policy meet. With an emphasis on contemporary examples, this project examines the rhetoric used to protect the nation and identifies places of resistance which influence the future of social justice activism.
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Details
- Title
- Dressing wounds and healing justice
- Creators
- Allyson Arbury Wolf
- Contributors
- C. Richard King (Chair)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Department of Critical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies
- Theses and Dissertations
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University
- Number of pages
- 160
- Identifiers
- 99901055024001842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Dissertation