Coming apart at the seams: How the theatrical within fashion makes space for empowerment

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-90
Author(s):  
Jess Montgomery
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Ways Of Being

Relationships between fashion and theatricality open up spaces of fantasy in which new ways of being can be imagined. In drawing upon the ways in which theatre exists in a space that is both physically real and created through imagination, the theatrics of high fashion similarly create spaces that are both physically real and imagined. Though often read as a symptom of an unnecessarily excessive system, theatricality in fashion can alternatively signal a turn towards a more ethical fashion system. Because fashion (as it relates to the production and consumption of clothing and other wearable goods) is invariably part of the problem, it provides a unique and valuable way of investigating practices of overconsumption, waste and environmental abuse. However, because high fashion functions in a space of slippages between the physically real and the imaginary, it also contains the potential to provide imaginings of possible alternative futures. Drawing upon Steven Meisel’s photography editorial for Italian Vogue, ‘Water & Oil’ (August 2010), this article investigates the ways in which fashion’s excessiveness can be reimagined as an argument for the essentialness of pleasure, and that pleasure is not synonymous with waste.

scholarly journals Superwomen? Young sporting women, temporality and learning not to be perfect

2020 ◽  
pp. 101269022097971
Author(s):  
Noora J Ronkainen ◽  
Jacquelyn Allen-Collinson ◽  
Kenneth Aggerholm ◽  
Tatiana V Ryba
Keyword(s):  
Young Women ◽  
High Performance ◽  
Time Perspective ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Alternative Futures ◽  
Life World ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Dual Careers ◽  
Ways Of Being ◽  
Depth Interviews

New forms of neoliberal femininity create demanding horizons of expectation for young women. For talented athletes, these pressures are intensified by the establishment of dual-career discourses that construct the combination of high-performance sport and education as a normative, ‘ideal’ pathway. The pressed time perspective inherent in dual-careers requires athletes to employ a variety of time-related skills, especially for young women who aim to live up to ‘superwoman’ ideals that valorise ‘success’ in all walks of life. Drawing on existential phenomenology, and in-depth interviews with 10 talented Finnish sportswomen (aged 19–22), we explored their experiences of lived time when pursuing dual-careers in upper secondary sport schools. Exploring participants’ bodily experiences of inhabiting the achievement life-world, we analyse how these sportswomen either learned ways of living up to this ambitious script or came to understand the detrimental effects of the script, necessitating other ways of being. For those who experience a disjuncture between the ‘perfect’ and their embodied experience, self-care practices are needed to restore life-world harmony, and orient to alternative futures.

On visions and promises — ethical aspects of in vitro meat

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (6) ◽  
pp. 753-758
Author(s):  
Silvia Woll
Keyword(s):  
Animal Welfare ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Meat Production ◽  
Ethical Aspects ◽  
Existing Problems ◽  
In Vitro Meat ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Production Conditions

Innovators of in vitro meat (IVM) are convinced that this approach is the solution for problems related to current meat production and consumption, especially regarding animal welfare and environmental issues. However, the production conditions have yet to be fully clarified and there is still a lack of ethical discourses and critical debates on IVM. In consequence, discussion about the ethical justifiability and desirability of IVM remains hypothetical and we have to question those promises. This paper addresses the complex ethical aspects associated with IVM and the questions of whether, and under what conditions, the production of IVM represents an ethically justifiable solution for existing problems, especially in view of animal welfare, the environment, and society. There are particular hopes regarding the benefits that IVM could bring to animal welfare and the environment, but there are also strong doubts about their ethical benefits.

Becoming the Nuclear-Front-End

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (189) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Schukalla
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Reactor ◽  
Chemical Elements ◽  
High Technology ◽  
Power Production ◽  
Uranium Mining ◽  
Nuclear Industry ◽  
Current State ◽  
Front End ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Uranium Exploration

Uranium mining often escapes the attention of debates around the nuclear industries. The chemical elements’ representations are focused on the nuclear reactor. The article explores what I refer to as becoming the nuclear front – the uranium mining frontier’s expansion to Tanzania, its historical entanglements and current state. The geographies of the nuclear industries parallel dominant patterns and the unevenness of the global divisions of labour, resource production and consumption. Clearly related to the developments and expectations in the field of atomic power production, uranium exploration and the gathering of geological knowledge on resource potentiality remains a peripheral realm of the technopolitical perceptions of the nuclear fuel chain. Seen as less spectacular and less associated with high-technology than the better-known elements of the nuclear industry the article thus aims to shine light on the processes that pre-figure uranium mining by looking at the example of Tanzania.

Scenes from the Margins

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-136
Author(s):  
Kathryn Joan Leslie
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Professional Association ◽  
Communication Studies ◽  
Alternative Futures

The scenes in this reflection explore the ways my white, queer, nonbinary body navigates a professional association from the margins under the influence of white supremacy. I confess to shadow feelings of self-importance that continuously creep up as I engage in anti-racist work and consider how this presence of white righteousness must be relentlessly undermined and destabilized as we work to consider new and alternative futures for (organizational) communication studies.

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