The Trousers and Research Methodology for Oppressive Design

Main Article Content

Ory Bartal

Abstract

As clothing represents social, political, and performative values pertaining to gender, it is not surprising that they also serve as oppressive designed objects. One of the most significant symbols of gender power relations were the trousers that women were banned from wearing in the West as a daily fashion item until the second half of the 20th century. This article presents the history of trousers via a new research methodology for studying oppressive design. This methodology is built on Michel Foucault’s approach to genealogical research and Bruno Latour’s ideas about the social agency of objects. Just as Foucault revealed the history of norms, ideas, discourses, and values, which are abstract yet powerful entities, this methodology focuses on identifying the moment in which oppressive objects first entered into daily common use, becoming a new natural and oppressive ‘truth’ that shaped the worldview of its users. This approach builds on Latour’s argument that objects serve as mediating devices of values and discourses between individuals, and the idea that genealogical research concerning their use might expose their socio-historical function and powerful involvement in shaping and policing power relations over time.

Article Details

How to Cite
Bartal, O. (2023). The Trousers and Research Methodology for Oppressive Design. Diseña, (22), Article.5. https://doi.org/10.7764/disena.22.Article.5
Section
Original articles
Author Biography

Ory Bartal, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

Ph.D., University of Tel Aviv. After obtaining a BA in Japanese studies and International relations from the Hebrew University, he earned a M.B.A. from Aoyama Gakuin University and a M.Des. in Industrial Design from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. He is a Professor and head of the Visual and Material Culture Department at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design. As a researcher of visual and material culture, his focus is on contemporary Japanese visual culture and design, including industrial and fashion design, as well as manga and visual communication. He is the author of Postmodern Advertising in Japan: Seduction, Persuasion and the Tokyo Art Directors Club (Dartmouth College Press, 2015), Critical Design in Japan: Material Culture, Luxury and the Avant-Garde (Manchester U. Press, 2020). Some of his recently published articles include ‘What does Design Want? On the Social Role of Design and the Social Position of Critical Designʼ (Bezalel – Journal of Visual and Material Culture, Vol. 6) and ‘The 1968 Social Uprising and Ad­vertising Design in Japan: The Work of Ishioka Eiko and Suzuki Hachirōʼ (Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Vol. XXVIII).

References

Arvanitidou, Z., & Gasouka, M. (2013). Construction of Gender through Fashion and Dressing. Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences, 4(11), Article 11. https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n11p111

Barthes, R. (1990). The Fashion System. University of California Press.

Boucher, F. (1987). 20,000 Years of Fashion: The History of Costume and Personal Adornment. Harry N. Abrams.

Braizaz, M. (2019). Femininity and Fashion: How Women Experience Gender Role Through their Dressing Practices. Cadernos de Arte e Antropologia, 8(1), Article Vol. 8, No 1. https://doi.org/10.4000/cadernosaa.2001

Butler, J. (1991). Imitation and Gender Insubordination. In D. Fuss (Ed.), Inside/out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories (pp. 13–31). Routledge.

Cavallaro, D., & Warwick, A. (1998). Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body. Berg.

Costanza-Chock, S. (2018). Design Justice: Towards an Intersectional Feminist Framework for Design Theory and Practice. Proceedings of the Design Research Society 2018.

Crane, D. (2000). Fashion and Its Social Agendas: Class, Gender, and Identity in Clothing. ‎University of Chicago Press.

Criado Perez, C. (2019). Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. Random House.

Eco, U. (1986). Travels in Hyper Reality. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Entwistle, J. (2000). The Fashioned Body: Fashion, Dress and Social Theory. Polity.

Entwistle, J. (2001). The Dressed Body. In J. Entwistle & E. Wilson (Eds.), Body Dressing (pp. 33–58). Berg. https://doi.org/10.2752/9780857854032/BODRESS0006

Entwistle, J. (2015). Bruno Latour Actor-Network-Theory and Fashion. In A. Rocamora & A. Smelik (Eds.), Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists (pp. 269–284). I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755694785.ch-016

Entwistle, J. (2020). ‘Power Dressing’ and the Construction of the Career Woman. In M. Barnard (Ed.), Fashion Theory: A Reader (pp. 285–296). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315099620-31

Fallan, K. (2008). Architecture in Action: Traveling with Actor-Network Theory in the Land of Architectural Research. Architectural Theory Review, 13(1), 80–96. https://doi.org/10.1080/13264820801918306

Fisher, W. (2016). “Had it a Codpiece, ’twere a man indeed”: The Codpiece as Constitutive Accessory in Early Modern English Culture. In B. Mirabella (Ed.), Ornamentalism: The Art of Renaissance Accessories (pp. 102–129). University of Michigan Press.

Flügel, J. C. (1969). The Psychology of Clothes. Hogarth.

Foucault, M. (1988). On the Ways of Writing History. In J. D. Faubion (Ed.), Essential Works of Foucault 1954– 1984: Volume 2: Aesthetics (pp. 279–296). The New-York Press.

Foucault, M. (1976). The History of Sexuality. Penguin.

Foucault, M. (1977). Nietzsche, Genealogy, History. In D. Bouchard (Ed.), Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (pp. 139–164). Cornell University Press.

Gorguet Ballesteros, P. (2017). Women in Trousers: Henriette d’Angeville, a French Pioneer? Fashion Practice, 9(2), 200–213. https://doi.org/10.1080/17569370.2016.1215112

Krarup, T. (2021). Archaeological Methodology: Foucault and the History of Systems of Thought. Theory, Culture & Society, 38(5), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276420984528

Latour, B. (1987). Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society. Harvard University Press.

Latour, B. (1994). On Technical Mediation: Philosophy, Sociology, Genealogy. Common Knowledge, 3(2), 29–64.

Latour, B. (2004). Nonhumans. In S. Harrison, S. Pile, & N. Thrift (Eds.), Patterned Ground: Entanglements of Nature and Culture (pp. 224–227). Reaktion.

Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory. Oxford University Press.

Latour, B. (2009). A Collective of Humans and Nonhumans: Following Daedalus’s Labyrinth. In D. M. Kaplan (Ed.), Readings in the Philosophy of Technology (pp. 156–172). Rowman & Littlefield.

Lemire, B. (2016). A Question of Trousers: Seafarers, Masculinity and Empire in the Shaping of British Male Dress, c. 1600–1800. Cultural and Social History, 13(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14780038.2016.1133493

Liao, S., & Huebner, B. (2021). Oppressive Things. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 103(1), 92–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12701

Mayor, A. (2016). The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World. Princeton University Press.

Perrot, P. (1994). Fashioning the Bourgeoisie: A History of Clothing in the Nineteenth Century (R. Bienvenu, Trans.). Princeton University Press.

Piponnier, F., & Mane, P. (1997). Dress in the Middle Ages (C. Beamish, Trans.). ‎Yale University Press.

Reilly, A. (2021). Introducing Fashion Theory: From Androgyny to Zeitgeist. Bloomsbury.

Ribeiro, A. (1986). Dress and Morality. Berg.

Riello, G. (2020). Back in Fashion: Western Fashion from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press.

Schneider, J., & Weiner, A. B. (1986). Cloth and the Organization of Human Experience. Current Anthropology, 27(2), 178–184. https://doi.org/10.1086/203416

Simmel, G. (1957). Fashion. American Journal of Sociology, 62(6), 541–558.

Steele, V. (1989). Men and Women: Dressing the Part. Smithsonian.

Suterwalla, S. (2012). Cut, Layer, Break, Fold: Fashioning Gendered Difference, 1970s to the Present. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 41(1/2), 267–284.

Turner, M. (2019). Chaucer: A European Life. Princeton University Press.

Tynan, J. (2015). Michel Foucault: Fashioning the Body Politic. In A. Rocamora & A. Smelik (Eds.), Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists (pp. 184–199). I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755694785.ch-011

Willis, A.-M. (2006). Ontological Designing. Design Philosophy Papers, 4(2), 69–92. https://doi.org/10.2752/144871306X13966268131514

Wissinger, E. (2015). Judith Butler: Fashion and Performativity. In A. Rocamora & A. Smelik (Eds.), Thinking Through Fashion: A Guide to Key Theorists (pp. 285–299). I.B. Tauris. https://doi.org/10.5040/9780755694785.ch-017