The Way People Clothe Themselves

I found franz fanon's account of the matrices of fetishization of the veil to be pretty fascinating. “In a confused way, the European experiences his relation with the Algerian woman at a highly complex level. There is in it the will to bring this woman within his reach, to make her a possible object of possession. This woman who sees without being seen frustrates the colonizer. There is no reciprocity.” (44) Fanon goes on to describe the different reactions of European women to the Algerian practice of wearing a veil – that, indeed, it was no more mysterious than their own practices of wearing makeup as it sought to hide imperfections. It was but another way of dealing with the male's gaze.

But for the male colonist, the issue is not uncomplicated. The veil poses a challenging role. It is the very thing which makes the Algerian woman enchanting for the white colonist through the enticing pull of the uncertain – a very simple device and plainly a device at that. The white colonist comes to see the veiled woman as a goddess. Where he cannot see a face he allows his most thorough fantasies to rest there, beneath the veil.

I'm interested in the extent to which this fetishized otherness – racial otherness, here represented via clothing customs rather than skin tone or facial structure – plays an essential role in the very creation of races. Coco Fusco discusses the importance of early photographic accounts of racial others and the inevitable fetishization that occurred. We've seen the continual skewed differentiation in popular advertising media. How much of this is the result of fetish? One could even consider this from a semiological standpoint – that races, like words, can only have meaning when they are set in opposition to other races. Signs gain meaning through a matrix of differentiation; and thus do races gain meaning only through interaction (and fetishization) with other races.