Fashioning the Other: Representations of Brazilian Women’s Dress in National Geographic, 1888-1988 (original) (raw)
Related papers
Fashioning Brazil: Globalization and the Representation of Brazilian Dress in National Geographic
2018
As a popular 'scientific' journal, National Geographic is a substantial source for the formation of many Brazilian stereotypes in the 19 th and 20 th-century American popular imagination. Analysing how National Geographic divided, organised, charted and narrated Brazil, through its visual and textual representations of Brazilian dress, reveals the oppressive arrangements of race, gender, sexuality and identity that masquerade as objective knowledge rather than subjective expression. This chapter will apply and develop Mary Louise Pratt's concept of the 'contact zone' to examine National Geographic's representations of Brazilian dress and adornment from 1888 to 1988, within the context of the geo-political relations between Brazil and the United States. Pratt defines 'contact zones' as 'social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.' 1 Here we can understand 'contact' not as a static, deterministic state but as an intricate and, crucially, continually shifting process of cultural exchange, one that is characterised by conquest and colonisation. Representation in such a zone emerges as a complex cultural process, in which meaning is not inherent in the clothing itself, but has been fashioned by National Geographic in response to modulations in the balance of power between North and South. Whilst the site of contact continually shifts, the determining of its outcome remains the same: the textual and photographic propagation of Western hegemony over the 'Other.'
Fashion Theory, 2016
As a popular 'scientific' journal, National Geographic is a substantial source for the formation of many Brazilian stereotypes in the 19 th and 20 th-century American popular imagination. Analysing how National Geographic divided, organised, charted and narrated Brazil, through its visual and textual representations of Brazilian dress, reveals the oppressive arrangements of race, gender, sexuality and identity that masquerade as objective knowledge rather than subjective expression. This chapter will apply and develop Mary Louise Pratt's concept of the 'contact zone' to examine National Geographic's representations of Brazilian dress and adornment from 1888 to 1988, within the context of the geo-political relations between Brazil and the United States. Pratt defines 'contact zones' as 'social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.' 1 Here we can understand 'contact' not as a static, deterministic state but as an intricate and, crucially, continually shifting process of cultural exchange, one that is characterised by conquest and colonisation. Representation in such a zone emerges as a complex cultural process, in which meaning is not inherent in the clothing itself, but has been fashioned by National Geographic in response to modulations in the balance of power between North and South. Whilst the site of contact continually shifts, the determining of its outcome remains the same: the textual and photographic propagation of Western hegemony over the 'Other.'
2016
As a popular 'scientific' journal, National Geographic is a substantial source for the formation of many Brazilian stereotypes in the 19 th and 20 th-century American popular imagination. Analysing how National Geographic divided, organised, charted and narrated Brazil, through its visual and textual representations of Brazilian dress, reveals the oppressive arrangements of race, gender, sexuality and identity that masquerade as objective knowledge rather than subjective expression. This chapter will apply and develop Mary Louise Pratt's concept of the 'contact zone' to examine National Geographic's representations of Brazilian dress and adornment from 1888 to 1988, within the context of the geo-political relations between Brazil and the United States. Pratt defines 'contact zones' as 'social spaces where cultures meet, clash and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power.' 1 Here we can understand 'contact' not as a static, deterministic state but as an intricate and, crucially, continually shifting process of cultural exchange, one that is characterised by conquest and colonisation. Representation in such a zone emerges as a complex cultural process, in which meaning is not inherent in the clothing itself, but has been fashioned by National Geographic in response to modulations in the balance of power between North and South. Whilst the site of contact continually shifts, the determining of its outcome remains the same: the textual and photographic propagation of Western hegemony over the 'Other.'
The Laws of Image-Nation: Brazilian Racial Tropes and the Shadows of the Slave Quarters
Law and Critique volume, 2018
The commemorative edition of the 80th anniversary of Casa Grande & Senzala, the founding book of Brazilian modern sociology written by Gilberto Freyre and published in 2013, shows on its cover a glamorous ‘Casa Grande’ (Big House, the Lord’s house), lit like an architectural landmark, ready to serve as the set for a film or a TV soap opera. What happened to the ‘Senzala’ (the Slave Quarters) that appeared on the covers of the dozens of previous editions? This paper investigates, following some changes in Brazilian Visual Culture in the twentieth century, how such an astonishing disappearance could take place. The paper examines the image of the slave quarters as part of a racial trope: a foundational and colonial trope, one that is capable of institutionalizing subjects and producing a subaltern mode of subjectivity. It also explores connections between critical legal studies and visual and cultural studies to question how and why knowledge produced over the status, nature and function of images contributes to institute—and institutionalize subjectivity. In order to explain this disappearance we propose a legal-iconological experiment. We will enunciate, and attempt to enact, the Statute of Image-nation: the laws of the image that constitute subjectivity in Brazilian racial tropes. In doing so, we might be able to point out the ways in which law and image function together in institutionalizing subjectivity—and subjection.
The Brazilian woman: from the colonial photography to contemporary Portuguese photography
This study aims to carry out an initial analysis of how the Brazilian woman image is shaped by a discourse that is historically constructed and reinforced by colonial photography. This visuality has endured through the ages and represents a form of contemporary colonialism, as it is characterized by an identity reductionism disguised as a global ideology. The possibility of paradox prevalence in these speeches is analyzed through a critical view of the work of André Cepeda and Miguel Valle de Figueiredo, Portuguese photographers who has produced photography artwork about the Brazilian woman. In these images, the construction of a visual concept of Brazilian women revealed underlying statements supported by their perceptions and experiences , as well as in generalized beliefs. Thus, it was concluded that the understanding of the image of Brazilian women as portrayed by those photographers shows itself covered of brand new colonizing processes in which the Brazilian woman's image is linked with a sense of an available and sensual body, imbued with the concept of a colonial body that still persists in contemporary imagery.
The article analyzes the image of the Amazonian woman as represented by Elizabeth Agassiz in A Journey in Brazil: 1865- 1866, published in Europe in 1867 and based on the diary of the Thayer scientific expedition, led by the naturalist Louis Agassiz. The study concentrates on records of their passage through the Amazon, as retold in chapters IV through XI. For the purpose of this analysis, a few basic points in the divergence between the chronicler’s Western logic and the local population’s lifestyle have been chosen, as evidenced in the text: the clash with Agassiz’s viewpoints on feminine autonomy, aesthetics, temporality, and, lastly, the West’s deterministic conceptions of miscegenation as inherently negative and of the Amazon itself, based on polygenism of creationist inspiration. The article also discusses the era’s outlook as far as the role the Amazon might play in the project of the Brazilian nation.
Since the 1990’s heterosexual male sex tourism, intimately connected with child sexual exploitation and with sex trafficking, raised serious concern in Brazilian public debates. In this framework, attention was directed towards how advertisements produced by the tourism industry and by governmental agencies, which officially publicized the country with sexualized images of women, contributed to stimulating interest in the country among people seeking sexual tourism. In this paper I address these discussions, considering the historical, cultural and political processes that have permeated this country’s eroticization. Using as references these processes and ethnographical studies carried out in various international tourist locations in the Brazilian Northeast between 1999 and 2009, I argue that to understand the dissemination of eroticized notions about Brazil in tourist markets we need to follow complex flows of ideas and pay attention to how national and transnational levels have interacted and to how these notions have been incorporated by local people who “translate themselves” to foreign and national visitors in touristic scenarios. My second argument is that the intensity of the focus on sexual tourism has obscured how the eroticization of Brazilian tourist sites’, which embrace qualities attributed to tropical landscapes (either beaches or jungles) and “tropicalized” communities, has permeated in differentiated ways diverse styles of tourism.
Proceedings of the 35th CIHA World Congress Motion: Migrations, 2023
During the nineteenth century and a great part of the twentieth, fashion was a clear marker of gender, as well as a device for disciplining the body. Being dressed according to biological sex, occupation and social class was imperative for the rising bourgeoisie, who saw extreme danger in transgressing any of these norms. This paper analyses some of these occasions and the conflicts raised by public opinion when crossdressers and "serious" actresses filled the centrical theaters thanks to their drag shows. Likewise, liminal characters on the edge of the law made crossdressing a way of life, allowing them to travel, hide and intervene from the margins. Moreover, it focuses on the images of these crossdressers, paying particular attention to the styles and poses used to shape their appearance. My main hypothesis sustains that the identity of these "other" genders was effective precisely because it understood and mimicked "correct" female or male identities that, in turn, were based on a masquerade. Even at the beginning of the twentieth century, the public persona of "proper" men and women rested on stereotypical and theatrical forms, in which preestablished poses obliterated the personality, psychology and particular ways of each human being.