Patterns in Circulation: Cloth, Gender, and Materiality in West Africa - Hardcover

Sylvanus, Nina

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 022639719X ISBN 13: 9780226397191

Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

In this book, Nina Sylvanus tells a captivating story of global trade and cross-cultural aesthetics in West Africa, showing how a group of Togolese women—through the making and circulation of wax cloth—became influential agents of taste and history. Traveling deep into the shifting terrain of textile manufacture, design, and trade, she follows wax cloth around the world and through time to unveil its critical role in colonial and postcolonial patterns of exchange and value production.
           
Sylvanus brings wax cloth’s unique and complex history to light: born as a nineteenth-century Dutch colonial effort to copy Javanese batik cloth for Southeast Asian markets, it was reborn as a status marker that has dominated the visual economy of West African markets. Although most wax cloth is produced in China today, it continues to be central to the expression of West African women’s identity and power. As Sylvanus shows, wax cloth expresses more than this global motion of goods, capital, aesthetics, and labor—it is a form of archive where intimate and national memories are stored, always ready to be reanimated by human touch. By uncovering this crucial aspect of West African material culture, she enriches our understanding of global trade, the mutual negotiations that drive it, and the how these create different forms of agency and subjectivity.
 

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Nina Sylvanus is assistant professor of anthropology at Northeastern University.
 

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Patterns in Circulation

Cloth, Gender, and Materiality in West Africa

By Nina Sylvanus

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2016 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-39719-1

Contents

Preface, 
Acknowledgments, 
Introduction: Patterns in Circulation, 
1 Fashioning the Body: Dressing the Public Self, 
2 Archival Prints: Alternate Histories of Taste and Circulation, 
3 Branding Cloth, Branding Nation: The Nana Benz and the Materiality of Power, 
4 Flexible Patterns: The Nanettes Remake the Market and Cloth in China, 
5 Dangerous Copies: Old Value Systems in a New Economy, 
Conclusion: Assigamé Burning, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 
Plates, 

CHAPTER 1

Fashioning the Body: Dressing the Public Self

When I visited my friend Atsoupi on a steamy day in December 2010, she was carefully planning her outfit in preparation for a wedding celebration that promised to be the talk of the town. The special occasion was highly anticipated by many in the city. "All of Lomé will be there," Atsoupi told me with great excitement in her voice. Atsoupi did not personally know the bride and groom, but her boyfriend had invited her to accompany him. She took this invitation very seriously. Fully resolved to make this the occasion for an especially fashionable appearance, Atsoupi had saved up money to purchase a pagne she had always wanted to own. She had clear ideas of what to do with it and was determined to carry out her vision. "I've already spoken to the tailor about the cut," she informed me. "It will be beautiful!"

A few days later, I accompanied Atsoupi to the market. While we strolled through aisles of shops filled with endless bolts of colorful cloth, Atsoupi spoke passionately about different patterns and the stories they evoke. She then chose "La Cible," the radiating sunburst pattern 14/0663. "I've liked this pattern since I was a little girl," she explained when I asked about her fabric choice. "It attracts the eye in this very special way; it bedazzles! And it moves so nicely on the body. It's really a classic ... my grandmother had it. It never goes out of style." But instead of choosing the conventional red, blue, and yellow color combination, she wanted a more glitzy hue to work on and through her skin. "I want my outfit to shine and catch people's eyes," she said decisively. "I think the bright green and blue will do it. What do you think?" But before I could comment on her aesthetic choice, Atsoupi spoke about the symbolic value of the chosen cloth. "People will know this pagne, and they will appreciate that I value our heritage. They will comment on the beauty of it and how I combine tradition with modern style," she said with conviction.

The evaluation of pagne fashions is particularly complex. The ability to "read" pagne includes knowing its history and context and identifying its place in a hierarchy of value denoted by origin and quality. Togolese use the terms tsigan ("big one") to indicate a high-value pagne, while tsivi refers to the "small" value of the cloth, also called petit pagne (small pagne). European-imported wax cloth is tsigan; it provides maximum "sparkle" and is preferred by fashion-conscious urbanites. The innovativeness in design, colorfastness, and high-quality cotton of the resin-resist wax print firmly locates that cloth in the high-value register. By contrast, the less durable, roller-printed "fancy" print is tsivi. Historically, these two types of factory-printed cloth have dominated West African markets; together they fall under the umbrella category African print cloth. Although inferior in quality to resin-resist printed cloth (hereafter referred to as wax print or wax cloth), the much more affordable fancy print aesthetic has long generated its own image culture. Both wax and fancy prints give material and visual form to the changing cultural norms and values that have shaped urban life in colonial and postcolonial West Africa.

In Atsoupi's eagerness to be seen in her outfit at such an important, life-changing, and value-creating event, she chose not just any tsigan but a classic wax hollandais (a Dutch wax print) design, albeit in an unusual color combination. The following day, I accompanied her to the tailor. Fabric and fashion magazine clippings in hand, Atsoupi consulted with a seamstress to design the unique look she hoped to create. The making of Atsoupi's garment was a complex affair and required several consultation visits before the tailor cut the material. Atsoupi was both excited and anxious. She had invested most of her monthly salary in this project and cautioned that, "Once it's cut, it's cut!" After the initial construction of the garment, several fine-tuned alterations were necessary to adjust the length of the maxiskirt, the sophisticated hemline, and the flared gores as well as the fit of the elaborately embroidered bodice. Finally, after multiple visits, Atsoupi was happy with the results.

The night before the big event, Atsoupi carefully rehearsed her look. She experimented with different accessories and evaluated the fit of the dress on her body. Several girlfriends had come over to assist her. They commented on the beauty of the outfit while they made suggestions on how to present it. As one of her friends explained, "It's not enough to just have a stellar garment. You have to accessorize it with the right high heels, the right purse, the right jewelry, the right perfume, the right hairdo, and you have to make it come alive!" A woman animates pagne and brings it into being, and it does the same for her.

Atsoupi chose the fabric for her outfit based on its eye-catching pattern and vibrant colors in addition to its value as a heritage design. While she counted on her pattern selection to elicit public recognition as a symbol of heritage and sophistication, she expected the materiality and visuality of the cloth to work for her in multiple ways. In fact, for Atsoupi, the cloth ought to work in personalized ways. Its effect is not simply about beauty, but instead evokes pageantry by organizing strategic elements to succeed — to be visually and spatially dynamic in presence. The colors should dazzle and enhance her skin; the borrowed and bought accessories should convey her sartorial power to perfection; she should walk in a certain way to alter the space. In this manner Atsoupi can control the way the room looks at her, and she knows, by anticipating the heritage pattern's effect, what they see.

Pagne, like the one Atsoupi chose for the wedding, is invested with a materiality that acts independently of human intentions, but whose potentiality only becomes fully realized in action. Such a notion of material agency requires moving away from a pure semiotic understanding of clothes as signs representing people to an understanding whereby signs/clothes have a material agency that is integral to the clothed person (Keane 2005; Miller 2010). In other words, sartorial and social successes are semiotically bound up in the social successes and failures of the (public) person.

In Togo, pagne is at once perceived as traditional and modern, classic and cutting edge. Pagne can be tailored into stylish garments, or it can be wrapped and knotted around the body. It is a material that is appreciated sensually, but which simultaneously conveys coded messages. It is vibrant matter with material agency, and yet it is manipulated by its wearer and brought to life by the body. It is an ordinary...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 022639719X
• ISBN 13: 9780226397191
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 224
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press; https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html; ; 5801 S. Ellis Avenue; Chicago; IL; 60637; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar