Fashioning the Self

The project consists in an empirical study of dressing practices as technologies of (self-)government theoretically framed by an articulation of Foucault`s theory of governmentality, Lacan`s tradition of psychoanalysis and Bourdieu`s Theory of Practice. Dressing practices shall be analysed by example of two Russian cities, Moscow and Ekaterinburg. The transformation process towards a market society and its effects on everyday practices and institutions - such as those of getting dressed - promise to emerge more distinctly there than anywhere else, not least as they are being explicated in private and public discourse (cf. Bourdieu`s notions of `doxa` and `epoche`). The theoretical framework of governmentality is being complemented by a psychoanalytical perspective of desire and the gaze, as both perspectives are necessary for understanding the process of self-fashioning; at the same time they enable a deeper understanding of governmentality. The central method of analysis applied will be Critical Discourse Analysis. The data material will comprise open interviews, pertaining media texts (e.g. fashion journals), scientific writing on the fashion/dress/body topic from various decades of the 20th century as well as selected movies and TV serials. This specific perspective towards the interrelatedness of `the cultural` and `the social` positions the present study within a Cultural Studies tradition. By focusing on dress it intends to cast light on a fascinating and ambivalent aspect of governmentality in late modernity.

The project consists in an empirical study of dressing practices as technologies of (self-)government theoretically framed by an articulation of Foucault`s theory of governmentality, Lacan`s tradition of psychoanalysis and Bourdieu`s Theory of Practice. Dressing practices shall be analysed by example of two Russian cities, Moscow and Ekaterinburg. The transformation process towards a market society and its effects on everyday practices and institutions - such as those of getting dressed - promise to emerge more distinctly there than anywhere else, not least as they are being explicated in private and public discourse (cf. Bourdieu`s notions of "doxa" and "epoche"). The theoretical framework of governmentality is being complemented by a psychoanalytical perspective of desire and the gaze, as both perspectives are necessary for understanding the process of self-fashioning; at the same time they enable a deeper understanding of governmentality. The central method of analysis applied will be Critical Discourse Analysis. The data material will comprise open interviews, pertaining media texts (e.g. fashion journals), scientific writing on the fashion/dress/body topic from various decades of the 20th century as well as selected movies and TV serials. This specific perspective towards the interrelatedness of "the cultural" and "the social" positions the present study within a Cultural Studies tradition. By focusing on dress it intends to cast light on a fascinating and ambivalent aspect of governmentality in late modernity.