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Deconstructing The Ivorian Vestimentary Traditions: New Fashion, Contemporary Beauty And New Identity In Marguerite Abouet And Clément Oubrerie’S Aya De Yopougon, Richard Oko Ajah, Letitia Egege
Deconstructing The Ivorian Vestimentary Traditions: New Fashion, Contemporary Beauty And New Identity In Marguerite Abouet And Clément Oubrerie’S Aya De Yopougon, Richard Oko Ajah, Letitia Egege
Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies
This paper adopts an eclectic framework of semiotic, postmodern and postcolonial theories to interpret the representations of dressing as an aesthetic activity in Aya de Yopougon 1-3 and to investigate how Yopougon dwellers use their fashion sense to establish both a group identity and a form of everyday resistance. Characters’ bodies are remade, through dressing, to contain emotive qualities and to play symbolic functions with their everyday choice of dress. Their sartorial obsession is supported by psychic inferiority and pop culture; all characters engage in “disciplinary practices” for the clothing culture of their bodies that are ornamented surfaces for display.