Curating Political Subjects: Fashion Curation as Affective Methodology

Abstract

In this exploratory piece, I read the material and metaphorical world of fashion for insight into the contemporary political condition. Drawing on my participation in a week-long professional training program in fashion and dress curation—hosted by the Victoria & Albert Museum (February 2018) —I examine curatorial practices as a methodological resource for engaging the limited and unstable spatiotemporal and subjective investments of modern politics. I suggest that fashion curation can reimagine and rematerialize political geographies and political subjectivities in the uncertain contexts of global urbanization, decolonization, and other contemporary challenges to political modernity. The narrative approach and visual documentation aim to immerse the reader in an experiential encounter with a curatorial methodology for feeling how the political world might be fashioned otherwise. This contribution works to mobilize and affectively engage readers in material metaphors for the complexities of contemporary spatiality and subjectivity.