Multicultural Fashion... Stirrings of Another Sense of Aesthetics and Memory Author(s): Nirmal Puwar Source: Feminist Review, No.

71, Fashion and Beauty (2002), pp. 63-87 Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1396022 . Accessed: 09/10/2011 03:55
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multicultural
stirrings aesthetics
of

fashion... another
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sense memory

of

Nirmal Puwar

abstract
This paper looks at the place of items long associated with the bodies of South Asian women in mainstream fashion. First, there will be a profiling of some of the scenes where bindhies, mendhies and related scents and sounds are donned and adored by white bodies. By participuting in conversations with South Asian women in Britain in the second part of the article, the author is able to discuss some of the stirrings raised by the recent legitimization of these items by multicultural capitalism, leading towards an exploration of a different sense of aesthetics, memory and desire. The ambivalent attraction of limited recognition offered by the anthropological urge to 'know' the ethnic 'other' is noted. A consideration of the rage induced by the power of whiteness to play with 'ethnic' items which had not so long ago been reviled when they were worn by South Asian women points to the historical amnesia that underlies much multicultural celebration. The allure of images packaged as oriental for South Asian women themselves, although often from a different set of sensibilities and memories, stresses the importance of historical reconstruction.

keywords
multicultural capitalism; orientalism; South Asian women; racism; bodies; memory

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introduction
In order to locate the place of the multicultural within the workingscxfthe fashion industry, it is important to look at how the bodies of 'other' women, in this case South Asian women, have historically and politically been called into play in the production of difference. It is only then that we are able to get a sense of the long reservoir of oriental phantasies upon which the recent fondness for an 'Indian Summer' in the world of fashion, music and general life-style relies. As I describe in the first part of the article, the booming trade in 'authentic' South Asian items enters a social space of consumption that is marked by class and distinction. Definitions of what are considered to be digestable portions of the East take on a variety of consumer dis/tastes. An underlying feature of much of this encounter with 'other' cultures is the universality of whiteness in the capitalist marketing of the local and global simultaneously. The eschewed recognition of anthropologically based multicultural consumption is able, as we shall see through the narratives of the South Asian women I have informally spoken with, to invite ambivalence. These narratives form the basis of the second part of the article. The ability of whiteness to celebrate versions of marketed difference, alongside a historical amnesia of the violence endured by South Asian women who have with or without legitimacy from catwalks in the West worn clothing marked as 'other', is able to evoke an emotion beyond ambivalence-rage. While asking for a recognition of the violence of the racialized gaze, we find that South Asian women also have recourse to a different sense of aesthetics: a poetics that has developed its own lines of creativity and sensuousness in alternative spaces of fashion and beauty. This is a textuality that is not solely defined by racism, or sealed within the bubble of exotica, but neither is it a desire that is not informed by either of these. It is not an insulated position. In fact, it is the co-existence of another sense of aesthetics amid the power of whiteness to celebrate or revile, which raises a whole series of memories that call for a reckoning of racial reasoning within the realm of fashion and adornment. The ability to consume images and items outside the orientalist matrix in which they have been marketed illustrates the existence of another sense of aesthetics, one that cannot be strangled by the revulsion of the racialized or the celebratory anthropological lens. In conclusion, we find that there is a sensuousness of touch, fabric, shapes, colours and dreams, of ever-changing formations that have long existed with an air of indifference outside the stereotypes, but at the same time does not forget the symbolic and physical violence of the stereotype.

part i-multicultural

phantvsies in fashion

Multiculturalcapitalism-capitalism based on the production and consumption of cultural diversity and the marketing of packaged versions of the texotic'-is at the cutting edge of globalized economic markets. Hybrid blends of the so-called

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'exotic' ast are especially in vogue at the moment, as they are sold as the new, the innovative and even the avant-garde (Cohen, 1999). In the world of fashion, the incorporation of the exotic, through chosen fragments, such as African headscarves, bindhies, cut and paste sarees, or mendhies, presents 'an effective way of creating a frisson (a thrill or quiver)' (Craik, 1993: 17). Fashion systems heavily draw on 'other' looks in order to generate new trends. These could be from the past, elements of sub-cultures (such as punks) or from racialized exoticized cultures and places. Withinthe dynamics involved in the interaction of the 'exotic' and the familiar, it is important to note that the differences between the ast and the West are accentuated stereotypically. Thus, the production of difference is an important element of the frisson that fashion relies upon.

the production of difference

xaggerated and bounded differences between the constituent parts of the ast and the West both solidify and amplify certain historical, yet essentialized, markers of difference built on the familiar and the strange identified in that highly influential text OrientaZism (Said, 1987). The processes entailed in the racialization of bodies take fear, desire, hatred and longing to fantastic heights (Fanon, 1986; Mercer, 1995; Hall, 1997). Notably, the bodies of women are especially important to this process as all that is seen to be enticing as well as repulsive of 'other' cultures is projected on to female bodies (Gilman, 1992; McClintock, 1995; Bhattacharyya, 1998). Women's bodies so often occupy the position of being boundary markers. The specific question of national identity and national character, from the perspective of the colonial and post-colonial, as well as anti-colonial national struggles, is so often imagined by making the clothing practices of women central to the marking of cultural difference (Mani, 2002; MooWherjee,2002). Specific clothing practices are amplified in what Mohanty (1991) has termed as 'the production of the third world difference', whereby asymmetrical distinctions are drawn between the women in the West and those from 'other' places and cultures. Both the saree and the veil, for instance, are, as Ahmed (1992) remarks with specific reference to the latter, 'pregnant' with meanings. It is no doubt possible to rely on the saree as the orientalist fantasy of the sensuous, exotic eastern woman, and the veil as the exemplary sign of the barbaric ast, most especially the Islamic ast. Homogenized static readings of the veil circulate regardless of the fact that (1) historically the veil has been practised by Christians as well as Muslims, and (2) more recently the veil has been donned by young women in metropoles both as an act of resistance against rising racist Islamaphobia and an act that facilitates anonymized freedom of movement (yegenoglu, 1998; 1 Guindi, 1999). This more nuanced and complex appreciation of the wearing of the veil is clearly beyond universal readings of the veil found in popular political imaginations, and most recently condoned by Laura Bush (the U.S First Lady) and Cherie Blair in their

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'anti-burka propaganda message ... Iaunched from the very heights of the White House and DowningStreet' (Khan, 21.11.2001 GuardzanL/nltmtted).Amid the war campaign against Afghanistan, Cherie Blair publicly stated, in the company of female government ministers, such as Claire Short and stelle Morris) 'Nothing more I think symbolises the oppression of women than the burkhawhich is a visible sign of the role of women in Afghanistan.' (cited in Taher, 30.11*2001, Eastern (ye). mptied of multilayered, overlapping and contested meanings and histories, in this reading, a veil is a veil, Just as a turban is a turban, regardless of whether you are an Indian diasporic Sikh living in Southafl or a dissident Saudi Muslim with the Tatiban. Cherie is able to adhere to a regressive stance on the veil while she on other occasions makes public appearances, often featured in the media, in South Asian dress-a fine example of what Hall (1999) has observed as the contradiction of a 'multicultural drift in Britain' (an unsettled entityJ see Hesse, 2000) occurring alongside the practice of racisn* Pathologized readings of the veil have for centuries carried traces of exoticized desire. Baked in the familiar and yet so distant image of Arabian Nightrs,the veil accompanied by a whole range of associated imagery, of deserts, black robes and almond-shaped kajaled eyes, has pulled the strings of gendered phantasy. The film Btlaji on trheBeach (1996, dir. GurinderChadha) humourously captured the postcolonial European orientalist desire for women in sarees and the veilJ through the character of the white middle-aged English gentleman who swoons around attemptingJ and sometimes with success, to woo both women in sarees and veils in the setting of the seaside resort Blackpool.

an '0ndian Summer'
Tastes of the variant elements congealed as the ast (Narayan, 1997) are, like any tastesXdistastes, subject to processes of distinction (Bourdieu, 1984). Although Bourdteu has not paid attention to how class and distinction operate in the specific consumption of the 'other', his theoretical framework can easily be adapted for this perticular purpose. Thus, it is possible to delineate how consumption of the ast enters the heavily classed social space of consumption patterns in general. Some consumers, for instancea have a preference for 'earthy' items purchased in charity shops like Oxfam, and others only give recognition to the East when it is packaged in exclusive individual items. In a special issue themed as an tindien Summer', tastes of the East are coded to Images of bondoged., partially the distinctive tastes of the readers of WaZZpaper. veiled women reveaiing unclothed hennaed legs and arms, and long slinky btack hair were spread across the pages of this ever so glossy life-style magazine. The readers of Walfpaper are, in both marketing and Bourdieu (1984) speak, of a certain type. They are cosmopolitan global players, located at the top end of heritage markets} whose travel time is spent in hotels that were once; in a longlost romantic Raj idyl1, maharaja palaces Fantasies of empirel travel and

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international play occupy an important part in the marketing of commodities: the joys of colour, rivers, travel and scented warm dinner parties on verandas come together. In terms of clothing, cuisines and general life-style, these readers are captured by the high life of 'aestheticized hedonism (the pluralism of 'ways of life')' (Zizek, 1996: 37), as it is embodied in the latest chic trends that throw in a touch of authenticity from around the globe. Their 'frisson' comes from being able to flit around with cultures, objects and places from all over the world. This particular niched ensemble of multicultural life-styling has emerged with a wider wave of capitalism that accumulates global consumers with attention to the local. Zizek (1996) argues that multiculturalism is an ideal form of ideology for global capitalism, as capital '... is effectively an anonymous global machine blindly running its course...' (ibid: 45), picking and taking from the various global locals whatever sells, and dropping that which is no longer good for profits. In this sense, he states that capital is universal, it does not discriminate, the world is its oyster, it will incorporate any local taste and offer it to the world through the frame of late capitalist globalized market economy, so long as it sells. In the year 2000, on the basement floor of the department store Selfridges, in an area catering for young female fashions, sitting among high street retail outlets, such as Oasis, KarenMillen and Diesel, a small concessions section run by an Asian company, Joshir (www.joshivbeauty.co.uk), was specializing in the art of henna. As customers had their hands, arms, legs or stomachs hennaed in one of the styles they chose from the illustrated cataiogue of styles on offer, they could also browse at the bindhies, chokers, beads and bangles circling a statue of the elephant god Ganesh on the display counter (see Photograph 1). In 2001, Selfridges no longer contains this outlet. Maybe they picked up the word on the street that there was 'too much Indian in the shops' (I overheard a couple of white young female teenagers making this remark on Oxford Street, London). With their ears to the ground, aided by the technology of electronic point-of-sale (POS) which allows for an up-to-the minute sales record of goods, the fashion industries are of course no strangers to the art of intermittently unleashing ever-changing exotic seasons in order to keep the machinery of cash registers moving with just-in-time productions. 2000 was the year when fashion markets were saturated by objects packaged as Indian. As we approached the millennium, fashion boutiques, malls, clubs and stalls sparkled with pashmino scarves, or at least with what passed as pashmino scarves, mendhies, bindhies, nose studs, sequinned and embroidered shoes, sanduls, handbags, jeans, tops and skirts. It was also a time when 'Asian Cool', like its longer established close cousin 'Black Cool' (Hall, 1998), sat in the limelight. Talvin Singh, Imran Khan (the editor of the now defunct glossy magazine Second Generation) along with a bunch of other cultural accoludes were presented as the cool hybrids, devoid of the so-called cultural trappings of their apparently 'traditional' parents-home grown in the urban metropoles of the West, while at

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Photogmph 1

the same time bearing the vital ingredients of the authentic ast. In club nights like Outcaste in Notting Hill, while Asian, largely male, DJsand rappers spun Ravi's situr twang, Talvin'sta-din-ta tabla sounds, and Nitin Sawhney's highly innovative ensemble with a touch of the angry raucous of Fundamental, keen crowds of white women with bindhies mimicked exaggerated fragments of Kathak dance moves while they swooned over the 'cool' Asian male talent (Sharma et al., 1996; Kalra and Hutnyk, 1998). Never before had it been so easy for Asians, both male and female, to 'pull' or rather to be 'pulled'; a bit of a far cry from the gaze of the greasy, ugly 'Paki' (Brah, 1996). Despite the predominance of the exoticized framework within which the work of these new South Asian artists is received, everything is not, thankfully, sealed in the bubble of exotica. At the very same club venues, a minority of Asian youth are interacting with music in their own way, while at the same time witnessing the ways in which musical creations of the second generation are coming of age in the, predominantly white, realm of popular culture. In fact, the majority of South Asian youth appreciate this music in other spaces outside the likes of club nights like Anokha in trendy, arty bohemian Hoxton (located in the ast nd of London). Though an ebb in the 'Indian Summer' of catwalks and celebrity (Madonna) fascination with pundits, bindhies and Kathak dance can be identified, new 71 2 0 0 2

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versions continue to be re-packaged on high streets and other cultural arenas. Carefully chosen elements of Asianness are flaunted in the 'hip', but at the same time youngishly high-brow bars-like Momoin central London, where old quawali musters presented by mediatories such as Aki Nawaz from the radical and racially aware band Fundamental play among the floor cushions, clatter of corporately endorsed barcardi, fresh mint cocktails and the chatter of 'creative' media types who peddle their latest promo tapes and adverts, as they catch glimpses of the musical ast. Before the quawali cohort came into public viewing, being one of a handful of Asian female faces at this event, in the teeming bar I was asked if I was the singer. Why? I9laybejust the sight of an Asian woman is enough to set off atmospheric melodies of the ast in the uropean imagination.

consumption of the 'authentic' other

Here we have the consumption of social things associated with the 'other' through a form of framing that transforms the meaning of objects by taking them out of their customary life world, such as the intimate, highly attentive and involved setting of the quawali, and places them in another pathway, in this case a bar full of people from the new cultural industries of the chattering classes, who just want some 'authentic' sounds in the background. This process can be referred to as a 'diversion of commodities' (see Appadurai's (1999: 28) analysis of 'the social life of things'). This often amounts to exotic aestheticization. It is a formation that is not all that different from art and archaeology collections in the West, where you have 'extremely complex blends of plunder, sale, and inheritance combined with the Westerntaste for things of the past and of the other' (ibid: 26, 27). The seal of authenticity generates a booming trade in the traffic of commodities, most especially between those places assigned with the attributes of nature, rawness, spirituality and craft work and the so-called technologically advanced West. Together, a particular fascination with, and a missionary zeal to 'save' civilizations under threat pervades a long-established relationship with 'primitive' objects and cultures found in distant, and what are seen to be distinctly different lands. A sociality of an essential and timeless primordial connection with nature and the spirit of ancestors circulates in international cultural and material exchanges. Museums and elite antiques markets have long-established routes in this area (Coombes, 1994). Today, street markets, designer and high street shops also trade on these desires (Gallini, 1996). An old, worn-out wooden bed from Rajusathan was, for instance, placed as a prominent feature at the entrance of Terence Conran's flagship interiors shop in South Kensington, bringing together 'the aesthetic impulse, the entrepreneurial link, and the touch of the morally shocking' (Appadurai, ibid: 28). UrbanOutfitters is a fashion retail outlet, with bases in North America and ngland, aimed at the clubby, slightly bohemian, twenty and thirty somethings. Here, moments away from the record collection and decks, a cerise-coloured silk

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_
S _ __
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_w

* -

_
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suree is hung from the ceiling bearing a placard that states: 'Traditional Saree: This vibrant and traditional beautifully crafted suree is 15-20 years old, and may have slight imperfections due to age. It may be draped on windows, beds, sofas, or used as a surong.' (see Photograph 2). Mythologies thus play a decisive part in sustaining desires that keep the vast impersonal global capitalist machine moving.

consumer difference
In an analysis that seeks to take Appadurai's methodological model for looking at the place of culture in the circulation of objects, Chownotes that in the world of exoticized commodities, racially ethnicized bodies are also subject to aesthetics of decontextualization, whereby they too are mythologized, idealized and/or demonized. Thus, it is not only the suree or the bindhie that are exoticized, but South Asian women, the customary wearers of those items, are simultaneously exoticized. However,when an item like the bindhie leaves the long and 'established pathway' (a technical term introduced by Appadurai, 1999) of the brown-skinned female body and is donned by a white female body, we also need to allow for the fact that this 'diversion' does not necessarily bear signs of the exoticized East.

* * * *
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While the bindhie can be seen to be overdetermined by mysteries of the ast, by entering quite a different ensemble it is also overlaid with other meanings and in fact even has the possibility of becoming a free flouting sign (Barthes, 1990) which is altogether emptied of its orientalist associations. Thus, all objects have a social life and while there are histories and pathways to the ways in which they have acquired their meanings, they are also always mobile, on the move and thus subject to constant change (Appadurai, ibid). At the same time though, we need to bear in mind that with the consumption of difference, the paradox is that it is possible to 'recode and neutralize long-standing tropes while simultaneously intensifying them' (Root, 1996: 136). In the consumption of the bindhie for example, we have to allow for the fact that while it is transformed in its entry into the fashion system of the young, white, designer, nouveau riche in London for instance, it bears overwhelmingfuntasies of 'other' women, even though in no time at all it is able to lose its eastern charm when it is discarded in favour of the next accessory that appears on catwalks and in high street shops. Niche markets and specialized consumption inflect the ways in which objects from the East, such as henna and bindhies, are received (consumed). The interchange is thoroughly tangled with life-styles and distinctions. The scenes from Momo and Wallpaper, described above, overlap with pashmino scarves, crooned by a particular 'class' of women, epitomized at the utmost in Londonby women in areas like Kensington and Primrose Hill. This is a 'slouney' middle/upper-classed version of exotic mixing that is quite different from the teenage and much cheaper play with sequins, bindhies and mendhies found in mainstream young female fashion shops like Top Shop and Miss Selfridges for instance. Located a footbridge away from Primrose Hill is Camden Market, which has its own version. Here a Goa type of take on the East, with josh sticks, bells, cotton throws and silver jewellery, has been peddled by hippies who have acquired these items from their spiritual voyages to the East for quite some time. The recent mainstream funfair with all things Eastern has exacerbuted the long-standing trend in Camden, as well as altered and diversified the type of objects that are now on display in Camden itself. Fashion styles akin to the more expensive high street boutiques and shops (KarenMillenfor instance) are sold at a fraction of the price in ever-changing styles made by staliholders. Thus, celebratory bells, bright red and yellow bunting, cliched signifiers of Rajasthan (see Photograph 3), often also sold in Oxfam, sit alongside short-cropped, silky sequinned tops and skirts. Distinction also enters the way in which sellers display their items: while most hang them on hangers in the open air, a few actually present their reconstructed surees in the form of jackets, tops, skirts and scarves in all shapes and sizes in shop fronts (see Photograph4 for a comparison of the two). A great majority of these items are made from surees of a style, in terms of fabric and embroidery, which was worn by South Asian women at least ten years ago. While marvelling at some of the new creations that have been generated by white people playing with surees, Asian women often amusingly

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wander off musing over whether there is still some (financial) life left in the surees that have sat unused in the bottom of their trunks for at least twenty years.

part ii - rage, memories and desire

Within the literature on the use of items associated with the East in the multicultural markets of the West, there has rightly been a great deal of discussion of exoticization and orientalism. Muchof this debute has focused on what the West is doing with difference and how it is treating the 'other' through the dynamics of capitalism. There has however been very little acknowledgement or recognition of what the reactions of South Asian women might be to the widespread use of items commonly associated with their bodies. It is towards a selection of these reactions that this paper will now turn. The discussion will draw on an on-going series of conversations I have participated in, in order to make sense of how I and other South Asian women in Britain, who are by no means a homogeneous group (Brah, 1996), view the encounter between white bodies, capitalist industries and items bearing traces of South Asian women. None of these conversations were formalized; they have taken place with friends, family and students, from a variety of backgrounds, in terms of age, occupation, education, locality, religion, sexuality and language. By using selections from these conversations, I am not seeking to represent all South Asian women or offering authentic noble accounts of the 'native'. Though, I do accept that the outlooks I uncover, through my own

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narrative, carry all the risks of being viewed as something akin to an anthropological 'observational platform' with 'magical, archaeological appeal' (Chow, 1998:105), precisely because it brings into view a different perception of modernity. My intention however is to place fragments of the reactions from South Asian women, whose ghostly image often surfaces in the capitalization of multiculturalism, at the centre of discussions of exotica. These narratives allow us to tap into spectres of a different set of memories and desire, an alterity which is by no means located in a pure space outside of orientalism, but neither is it bound within the bubble of exotica. Bell hooks (1996) speaks of the productive power of rage. She argues that commonly anger is situated as puthological; in contrust she asserts that it can be utilized to challenge and question the structures of racism that give rise to it in the first place. Thus, rage 'is an appropriate response to injustice' (hook, 1996: 26). The appearance of bindhies, an assortment of suree designs and mendhie kits in high street shops and on white skins, including celebrities, has the ability to induce an intense sense of rage in South Asian women. This rage carries memories of another history, of another type of Western gaze when similar items are worn by what are labelled as 'traditional' Asians, who are in fact more hybrid in their tustes and everyday cultures than any of the women who flip their pashmino scarves over their shoulder, and hold their studded nose in the air, while

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they jostle with the slippery mojay (shoes) with the backs folded down in Hampstead High Street (an upper-middle-class leafy neighbourhood in North London). Hybridity,understood as a 'melange' or a 'wild combination' (Venn, 1999: 263) is a blatant characteristic of first-generation South Asian women thot is often overlookedXPolka dot sarees worn with beehive hairstyles and matching bindhies is just one of many examples that can be offered.

the contrcidictory pull of anthropologJccilmulticulturalism

One type of rage I heard from some of the South Asian women who spoke about how they felt about the recent mass marketing of bindhies and mendhies (aka the 'Indian Summer'discussed above) contested the legitimucy of white female bodies to wear and sell these new creations on the rather problematic and essentialized basis that (1) the creations are not authentic to their 'true' meaning, and (2) the wearers do not knowtheir 'proper' anthropological significance. In other words, the objection is that this is an uninformed form of raiding which (1) does not respect the specific meaning of the items, and (2) is adulterating the correct context for consuming these items. From this vantage point, people like Madonna however, who celebrate the Sanskrit meaning of the symbols painted on the body with hennaJ are seen to be much more entitled to wear these items than those who have no inkling about the historical significance of these practices. The problem with this perspective is that it tends to fix the specific meaning and history of the individual items and then respects the 'informed' anthropological eye. Contradictorily however, while there is an acceptance of the anthropologically informed participant, alongside this narrative there is also a niggling discomfort of being understood in a limited multicultural neatly historicized framework, which after all is a classic anthropological stance towards 'other' culturesJ that leaves South Asian women feeling objectified, idealized and mythologized. The anxiety induced by this kind of encounter with the 'other' is actually not all that different from the effects of multicultural practices in schools. In school plays on Diwali for instance, South Asian children often experience these events as embarrassing spectacles, where remnants of recognition for their home life are found, but at the same time the representations are eschewed anthropological abstractions (Rattansi, 1992). The hostility towards these abstractions is, however, fairly tempered because they are at least seeking to engage with (albeit with cultural constructions that are ahistorically solidified in time) rather than destroy the existence of South Asians.

the violence of revulsion

There is another form of rage that was also shared in the conversations I have participated in. The trappings of the 'origins' discourse, noted above, is not a part of this particular form of rage. Here, the mixing or cutting and pasting are not the source of the rage-the blame is not placed in the meeting of the suree border at the bottom of frayed jeans. Chop and mix has always been an aspect of Asian

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fashions In the 1970s for instance South Asian diasporic dress included, bellbottoms embroidered with peacocks on the sides and curved hippie sleeves with sequins. Thus, it is not so much the cut and paste itself that is at issue here. Indeed, some of it is admired as being ingeniously creative and a welcome reconstruction of images from a familiar domain that is usually reviled. Rather it is the memory of violence, the familiar looks of revulsion (the greasy 'Paki') that rush back when one sees cut and paste versions of surees and jeans on white bodies that can create an unease. It is the power of whiteness to play with items it had only yesterday almost literally sput at, that lies at the core of this specific rage. Today mendhie is paraded on white bodies as a form of bodily decoration in fashion-conscious clubs as well as children's fetes and parties. Asian girls have a long experience of being taunted at school for having mendhie on their hands. The creativity and joy of applying mendhie in the lead up to a wedding has no place at school, where it becomes a tribal mess on the hands. The very hands they proudly spread out in anticipution of admiration of the deep redness of their mendhie in the company of family and friends at the moment of celebration are more inclined to be cowered inwards under the pressures of assimilation at school. Racist attacks reached one of their peaks in the late 1970s and early 1980s when 'Pakibashing' almost became a game played in the schools, workplaces and streets of Britain, as well as the formal political arena. People lived under the constant threat of attack almost to the extent where they placed themselves under curfew In the Midlands for instance, it was common knowledge that it was best to keep out of the City Centre on a Saturday when a football match was on, and especially around 4 o'clock when the crowds were leaving the stadiums and tensions were high; a 'Paki' would be an easy turget for a 'good kick-in'. In this atmosphere, school kids would spit from the tops of double-decker buses on to the heads of any Asians passing by on the street below. Racist abuse took on a gendered dimension, where bodily items specifically associated with Asian women were placed under attack. There were occasions when the plaited hair of Asian women, read as a sign of an ugly tradition, was set alight. Perhaps more than any other item worn by Asian women, the bindhie has been read as a visible marker of tradition, otherness and inferiority. 'Paki-bashing' incorporated the bindhie in its line of attack by tapping young Asian women on the head repeatedly in accompaniment with the words 'no you can't, no you can't have a council house'. As well as being left with a red bleeding mark, a sign of our primitiveness, Asians were thus scapegouted as scroungers who were destroying the social fabric of British society. In the aftermath of 11 September and the war in Afghanistan, we are witnessing a resurgence of racist abuse on the streets of Britain, where brown men in turbans or gouties and women with any type of head covering, especially a hijub, are subject to regular taunts. In fact, just the appearance of brown skin is an excuse for racist violence. Withinthis heightened climate of racial verbal abuse, it is not uncommon for young Asian women to be

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derided as 'Bin Laden's daughters' on a night out on the town in the streets of Britain.

the amnesia of celebration

The lack of recognition granted to the racist history that surrounds items worn by Asian women gives rise to a sense of injustice that refuses erasure in the face of an apparent celebration of Asianness. The words 'Do you remember when you thought we were ugly and disgusting when we wore these items?' bring the troubling historical amnesia of celebration to the fore. The problem is that the violent racist abuse meted out to Asian women who have worn these items has no place in the recent donning of these items. There is also a slight suspicion that those very white bodies who adorn themselves with these items have in the past and the present simultaneously 'frozen' Asian women with the 'look' (in Fanon's (1986) sense of a racialized 'look') of being a 'Paki'. It is worth noting that the hippie affair with Ravi Shankar, josh sticks and the spirit of the East is not the same as the recent mainstream take. While hippies were driven by a will to reconfigure the Westernalienated figure through granting value to the ast, albeit within the confines of exotica, those who saunter on Kensington High Street with their pashminos and mojay are playing with the East in quite a different way: one that refuses to see the power of whiteness as an empty privileged space (Mills, 1997; Williams, 1997). Hippies operated with the naive assumption that they could undo (escape) their privileges through romantic mythologizations of the ast which no doubt carried the damaging consequence of objectifying the East. The mainstream consumers today, all with their distinctively marked encounter, with the ast, do not even see the power of whiteness to grant legitimacy to items that have previously been 'othered'. The capacity of white bodies to play with bindhies and mendhies while retaining the pleasure of whiteness as a universal point is 'a disavowed, inverted, selfreferential form of racism' built on a multiculturalism which retains the position of 'the privileged empty point of universality from which one is to appreciate (and depreciate) properly other particular cultures [thus] the multiculturalist respect for Other's specificity is the very form of asserting one's own superiority' (Zizek, 1996: 40). It is precisely because white female bodies occupy the universal empty point (Dyer, 1997; Frankenburg,1997) which remains racially unmarked that they can play with the assigned particularity of ethnicized female bodies, that South Asian women are confronted by the arrogance of whiteness. Furthermore, the wearing of these goods by white bodies in white spaces represents a violent act because it prizes pleasurable objects away from their specific diasporic locations in social experience and memory and places them in an altogether space that is prone to fetishize them as isolated entities. This movement has much in common with the capturing and placement of photographs of poor immigrant workers into a context altogether different from the one they breathed life in, with the memory

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and gaze of the stranger bearing down on them (Berger, 1978). The gaze of bus loads of tourists who jostle into black neighbourhoods and churches to see black folks 'swooning and swaying' is also not that different (Williams, 1997).

Iiminal dissent Items of clothing and adornment have occupied a central place in the reversal of the racialized gaze as a means of gaining respect. Dreadlocks and other AfroCarribeanhairstyles have been utilized to deliberately assert the aesthetic beauty of 'blackness' in the face of negative conceptions, before they were appropriated by the mainstream. The bindhie and mendhie along with other South Asian styles of dress have not been through a process of anti-racist consciousness-raising, which Mercer (1994: 108) refers to as 'aesthetic denegation', at least not in an overtly political sense prior to the Western appropriation of these items. it is possible, for instance, to remember a time when the Afro, with its gendered variations in meaning and practices (Banks, 2000), sat among an ensemble of signs of resistance in the assertion of black pride and civil rights (Mercer, 1994; Craig, 1997; Kelley, 1997). This has not been the case with Asian styles of dress in Britain. Instead, these items have gone from being viewed as a negative sign of the apparent backward, tribal and ugliness of Asianness to being objects of a newly discovered 'Asian Cool' on the centre stage of fashion shows, high street shops, the latest photography shoots of celebrities as well as the more bohemian quarters of music and style. It is within the very space of this ruptureJin the movement from symbolic racial violence to the mainstream donning of bindhies and mendhies, that we can locate some of the existent forms of (political) rage. It is not a form of organized politicization that is akin to the social and political movements around 'black pride'. Rather, it is a form of dissent that is actualized in the liminality of everyday pleasures and has recourse to a form of political assertion that has existed through the very refusal of first and second generation South Asians to remove their sarees, bindhies, mendhies and turbans when they were not fashionable, in the face of accusations of tribalism. There is no denying that the assimilative pressure to not wear what are seen as ethnically marked and racially 'other' modes of dress has had a huge bearing upon people's daily 'choices'. Many first-generation Sikhs, for instance, cut off their hair when they arrived in this country in order to be accepted for work in factories. Asian boys who have kept long hair tied in various types of cloth on the top of their heads have received no end of abuse at school. Although some have dropped differences in hair styling and dress in the face of violent pressure, many have also resisted through persistence. There have been outright legal battles fought over the right to wear a turban in certain public spheres, such as the police force, but much of the resistance over dress and fashion has been quietly actualized through the daily pleasures of stylization. Thus, the saree for instance has not been worn as an explicit and overt political statement against racism, but because of a

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different sense of aesthetics, one that manages to exist in spite of the racializing lens. Neither is it a simple gesture of replacing an ethnically racialized gaze with a more positive gaze. While the wearing of the saree for instance in Britain is not totally outside the racialized 'look', the existence of another way of looking at aesthetics and beauty is not bound by the structuring limits of the 'legitimate gaze' (Fanon, 1986). There is another sense of style which is no doubt angered by denigrating racist processes which enable (1) the adoption of objects without any regard for the people who have worn them previous to the fads, and (2) the fascination with-packaged essentialized versions of culture. But at the same time, the anger has not extinguished the possibility of another conversation of texture, cut, colour, shape, beauty and sensuousness. In other words, the racism and orientalization of South Asians has not managed to kill or contain an alterity of aesthetics, which is not self-sealed in its own purity (Grosz, 1995), whose very existence has been a (quiet) form of enrichment/resistance in itself, without even consciously being for itself in an overtly political sense.

other shopping worlds

Rows and rows of shoes made in the style of ladies court shoes covered in silk and embroidery line Asian shoe shops found in Soho Road in Birmingham,The Broadway in Southall or Melton Road in Leicester, to name just a few of the South Asian shopping areas in Britain. There are also plenty of sandals in gold, silver, red velvet or plain leather, all with varying types of tassels and bells. In the same shops there are copious amounts of synthetic leather shoes made in styles similar to those you find in shops like Clarks (a respectable high street corporation that sells comfortable, sensible shoes), only with cheaper price tags. These shoes cater to the needs of elderly women. This is just a glimpse of what Asian apparel shops contain. Overthe years they have diversified and attended to niche markets, but they have existed for years, well before pashminos and bindhies reached the catwalks. These shops portray a different sense of aesthetic appreciation, and rather like black hairdressers and beauty parlours they have their own lines of conversation. Large walk-in vans lined with rolls of fabric in different weaves and putterns, driven by traders, usually male, from street to street were the first place where South Asian women could buy the latest styles in Britain. Womenwould gather and burter for the sarees, cardigans, bangles and cloth held inside these vans. When I was a child, it was a great pleasure to climb into these stores of colour. They represented limitless possibilities and immense scope for adoration and transformation. It was a bit like entering the world of Indian movies. For my mother, these visits reminded her of when bangle sellers visited neighbourhoods in India and women gathered to humour the male seller, and to together make choices over colours, sizes and materials (glass, metal or plastic). Food goods were sold in simiiar contraptions in Britain. Coriander, spices, pulses, ghee, rice

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and vegetables would be bought from the vehicles outside one's house. Slowly, shops replaced the moving vehicles. The shops cropped up one by one around towns and cities, with some places accumulating them at a faster pace than others. Places with a higher concentration of South Asians, like Leicester and Southall, became the centres of activity and enjoyment. The larger the shops, the more rolls of fabric and rails of ready-made clothes they contain. Costume jewellery, bindhies, mendhies and hairpieces sit inside glass cuses under the seiler's nose. In many of these shops, even to this day, the shoppers are so regular that goods can be bought 'on tick' (they are paid for some time in the future when it is convenient for the customer). Often particular shops are known by the name of the woman who runs and owns it (usually the same person), such as Raj's or Roree's Shop. The informal nature of the relationships in the shops is such that in one particular shop in Coventry for instance, the customers know at what times the shop owner will close for prayers and meals. In those shops where the owners live-in, in emergencies it is not unknown for customers to call in at times when the shops are officially not open by knocking on a window or a back door. There was a time when one shop contained everything that a woman might want in her wardrobe, which meant that people from different classes, custes and religions would at some point or another meet in the shops. The market has now become much more diversified, with more specialized shops selling designer and one-off pieces, imported from India or made by dressmakers themselves. Distinctions between the wealthier shoppers who seek the 'classic look' of fine silks and all the trappings of heritage cultures (hand-woven, historic, archival timelessness) and those who move with the trends in the rolls of fabric are also exacerbated by the rise of exclusive designer outlets (Raghuram, 2002). Increasingly dressmakers, who have largely been local and known through informal networks, are being supplemented by designer names whose dressmakers are unknown. The distinction between designers and dressmakers, found in more mainstream fashion (McRobbie, 1998), is thus also developing here. The escalation in the use of the car has also meant that people are more likely to drive, rather than walk, to the shops, thus like shopping in general, it has now become a lot less local and a much more anonymized affair. Nevertheless, the shops remain in the hub of South Asian shopping areas and we are yet to see an out-of-town outlet. Thus, despite the changes, a degree of informal interaction still remains. Weddings, job opportunities, cooking recipes, news through the diaspora and the general worries and pains of women are discussed in these venues. In those shops where a man works, usually alongside his wife, the conversation will not be quite so open or risque as it is in the all-female outlets (gatherings). Asian women are often discussed in academia as producing agents, especially in the image of textile machinists. There is a romantic portrayal of them as suffering workers or revolting heroines against the evils of capital with surees, trainers

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and banners in toe (Westwood, 1984; Phizacklea, 1990). Rarely however are they seen to be consumers as well as producers (Puwar, 2002). If trip to one of these shops where the sound of fabric being ripped to the rapid orders of South Asian women would soon put the distinction between the producing and consuming subject to rest. This recognition forces the question of how the subjectivity of South Asian women has been understood. Usually, South Asian women who work in the textiles industry are within feminism assigned a potentially political identity, by virtue of the fact that they are usually highly exploited by employers. If they are consuming clothes with a great deal of pleasure as well at producing, this begs the question: 'Can you care about design, color, texture, cut, draping, drafting techniques, display - that is, about clothes - and still be political?' (Kondo, 1997: 15). Furthermore, the dismantling of the producing (aka political)/consuming binary pushes the assertion that political opposition can also exist outside the factory barricades. 'How we dress, how we move, the music that accompanies our daily activities . .. do matter and can be included in a repertoire of oppositional strategies.' (Kondo, ibid: 13). Ourdefinitions of what is political have to be wide enough to incorporate producing and consuming agents. Howeach of these activities is politicized remains a question for localized situated analysis. While the above places nurture female adornment with a difference, they should not be mistaken for some romantic notion of harmonious alternative female communities. Like any other shopping venue, here too consuming powers are as usual subject to inequalities of wealth and income. These places are also sites of gossip, vilification and potential conflict, simply because they do not escape the hierarchies that pervade everyday life in general. They do though offer a retreat from the superior line of questioning found in white shops, which bellow 'Speak English?', in other words are you worthy of being treated as human? Here, we have a public space where different tongues can speak and different sensibilities can legitimately exist. Fabric can be caressed, touched and named. The right to touch is important because in so many 'white' informal fashion boutiques, firstgeneration South Asian women are through bodily gestures told that they must not handle the clothes, especially if they are not going to buy them. To deter the racially polluted (Sibley, 1995), possibly criminal, hands of these women from touching, I can remember seeing boldly hand-written notes saying 'Do not touch. Please ask for Attention' in the seventies-and this is in clothes shops, not in retail outlets selling bone china. In South Asian shops, all fabrics have a name. Some of these are taken from the latest Bollywood films, especially the big hits. The cuts, patterns, weight and shape of the fabrics that are used to make sarees, salwar kameezes and lengas constantly change. In fact, like the rest of the fashion world, the pace of change has accelerated over the years, with styles being out of date in a matter of months. Anthropologists will be disappointed to know that South Asian fashion can

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not be neatly classified into ethnic groupings, which allow for an ethnic map of who wears what. Khan(1992) offers a simple description,, which is deeply flawed by binary conceptions of East and West and also by a static representation of a changing world. Subsequently, her descriptions are emptied of the energy and life that exists in South Asian fashion styles.

another sense of aesthetics

The aesthetic and sensuous dimensions of the items found in the shops I have described above, as well as the fashion goods that move between India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and the diaspora through retailers or friends and families, have surrounded South Asian women in Britain. Recently, Bhachu (2000) has looked at second-generation South Asian female clothes designers in Britain, who own some of the new boutiques and names, as being especially avant-garde in their styling techniques. Whiletheir innovation is in need of recognition, we need to be careful not to slip into the old designer/dressmaker distinction between the younger generation and their mothers and grandmothers, who have been equally avant-garde, to the point of being kitsch, in their stitching, sewing and styling. They may not have had the financial resources and inclination to set up labels and boutiques for themselves, but they have certainly had a sense of ingenuity and creativity that risks being overlooked in the more popular academic celebration of the so-called hybrid second generation. Let us not forget that the second generation have grown up with sequins, silk, embroidery, thread, silver and gold shoes and handbags. They have played with them as children, got married in them, strutted them at parties or simply lounged around in them. Aunties, mothers and sisters-in-law have taken them through the ins and outs of particular styles, textures and fabrics; scissors and measuring tapes have taken over living rooms for the pleasurable craft of cutting, sewing and self-shaping. This has been an enjoyable constant in their lives, although one not without the usual encumbrances of dressing under the duress of gendered identities (Butler, 1997) and the weight of bearing the responsibilities of culture, nation and tradition (Mookherjee, 2002). Whenpieces or cut and paste versions from this world of alternative aesthetics are sold in high streets and worn by those who have denigrated this other sensuous world they have lived in as 'Paki' dress, as tribal, as something outside of fashion, gaudy, naive and overcolourful, South Asian women have an anger which says 'llow dare you don that which you have vilified our mothers and aunts for?' And, 'If you are going to play with "othered" items at least recognise the vilification first.' The disavowal of racism in the current dizzying heights of multicultural capitalism is what wounds; what is required is recognition of denigrated aesthetics before celebration. A commemoration of the plurality of cultures is prone to violence when it fails to offer a remembrance to racism.

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a different

repetition

of desire

The popularization of exotic images of South Asian items generates desire as well as anger. South Asian women are themselves caught in the contradictory pull of highly exoticized and essentialized, yet at the same time pleasurable, images. Enjoyment is a response that sits alongside distrust. The proliferation of objects located in the familiarity of their everyday landscapes into the realm of mass consumption brings with it a visibility, previously locked away in hidden cabinets and fantasies of Indian women. The arrival of desiring rather than denigrating images of barbaric Asians into the realm of the popular is seen to offer a sense of recognition. Though highly eschewed and limited, it is a form of recognition that now has a desirable place for Asians on a large scale, a form of treatment that is quite different from 'Paki-bashing'. It belies a thwarted form of recognition that 'black women' have to daily negotiate in the management of their sexuality (Marshall, 1996). Nevertheless, what we are talking about is a form of visibility that titillates through the exaggeration of cultural differences (Root, 1996). Within the economy of desire, South Asian women are able to partake in the orientalist consumption; this, however, is a participation that is not identical to exotica, as it has been so often described. It is not quite the same in its repetition. There is at the very least a slightly different pull to this seduction, with a complex mixture of emotions, references and social ities. Before going on to look at the differences in the seduction, I should add the proviso that by focusing on the responses of South Asian women to those items that are packaged in orientalist terms, I am not suggesting that all non-South Asian people are totally passive to oriental hailing and that they have no other way of relating to these items. Neither am I making the assumption that they respond to orientalist marketing in the same way. I would then of course be operating within a deterministic model of subjectivity. I do think it is possible for white women to consume items long associated with the bodies of South Asian women without being party to the orientalist matrix. In order to avoid engaging in symbolic violence, they would however need to grant recognition to histories of racial violence and be willing to work against the regular idioms in which these items are received. It is also possible for South Asian women to be totally inculcated in oriental discourses. All of these responses need further investigation. Myfocus is on a slightly different response that has been produced by South Asian women in Britain. The Crucial Trading Company sells floor coverings made from natural materials, such as sisal coir and sea grass. Many of these are imported from India. Adverts for these appear in home decorating and life-style magazines, such as Elle Decoration and Living Etc. Taking a look at one of their most frequently used advertisements (image withheld on the basis that its publication in this article would not be beneficial to the brand), what we find is the feet of an Asian woman moving in soft focus across the sisal coir flooring. Significantly, aside from the

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colour of her skin she is bearing markers of South Asian femininity. Heavy silver anklets adorn her and a burnt orange silken skirt sweeps across the pages. The technique of soft focus has the ability to suggest sensuousness; this is then interwoven with the spicy hot colours of the fabric and skin. The image stops at the calves of the model. If we were to complete the image, there would no doubt be more brown skin, bright natural fabric, heavy kajal, silver jewellery and the brightness of Eastern light. The presence of an earthy, young, innocent, yet dusky seductress is suggested, one that enhances the 'natural' qualities of the flooring material that is also imported from the East. Nature, sensuousness, pleasure, colour and aroma become entwined within the body of the woman and the carpet she walks on. The appearance of only fragments of this figure, containing an ensemble of items associated with the feet and lower parts of the legs, allows for a broad range of fantasies to be projected on to the image, as the woman is present and distant at the same time. This feminized ethnic specimen has a fleeting ghostly presence relying on a long reservoir of orientalist fantasi es.

In her reading of the film The Joy Luck Club as an orientalist text that 'simply panders to the tastes of "ethnic diversity"', Chow (1998) argues that we need to supplement this reading. She states: 'We need to begin where the other type of reading tends to end - namely, the place of the stereotypes, the myths, the melodramatic details.' (Chow, 1998: 106). In the conversations I had concerning The CrucialTrading Companyadvertisement a number of the women were drawn to the image, suggesting the necessity of a reading that gave attention to ambivalence as Mercer found in his contact with Mapplethorpe's photographs of naked black men (Mercer, 1994), as well as a recognition of other sensibilities. advert for The Even though they did not forget the context of the image-an Crucial Trading Company-Western capitalist industries vying for customers by playing with fantasies of women in the East, the combination of brown naked feet, anklets and orange fabric had a warming attraction for many of the women I spoke to. It took them back to a whole array of situations, reminding them of mothers dressed for important occasions in their silks and jewels. The image of brides sitting on the floor holding their knees to their chest and their feet outstretched with mendhie and heavy anklets came to mind. Scenes from classic Bollywoodfilms that have become common knowledge (as the sounds and images are constantly re-played) in many South Asian households, shops, work places and restaurants in Britain were also vividly recollected. Scenes and music from films are not just part of memories of the past, they also constitute today's poetics. Forinstance, classic images from the film Pakeezah (1972, dir. Kamal Amrohi) are projected on to the walls of South Asian club nights, including gay and lesbian forums such as 'Club Kali' in London (Kawale, 2002). In the popular film East is East (1999, dir. Damien O'Donnell), Meena, a young female teenager, brought up in a mixed family with a Pakistani father and white English mother mimics the dance gestures of

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Meena Kumari(the female heroine) in Pakeezah to a classic track 'Inhee logo ne', often played at social venues, while wearing over-sized Wellington boots and a broom in her hand in the backyard of her father's fish and chip shop in 1970s Manchester. The female heroine's feet (Meena Kumari)play a highly symbolic role in Pakeezah. Thus, the scene where the male star (Raaj Kumar)falls in love with the feet of an unknownwoman as she is sleeping on a train was fondly recalled in conversations, as was the scene where Meena Kumaridances on the shattered pieces of glass from a fallen chandelier As the courtesan invited to dance in the grand and opulent setting of the wedding of her own lover, who is from a wealthy and respected family and thus cannot marry her, this dance scene is instituted in a gesture of sufferance, defeat and defiance at the same time. It is this scene that is mimicked by Meena in ast is East. Although of quite a different genre, the film Sholay (1975, dir. Ramesh Sippy) also has a scene where Hema Malini (the heroine) is ordered by the king of the bandits (Gabar Singh played by Amjad Khan) who are threatening to kill her lover to dance on glass in the mountainous regions where unlawfulness reigns. Here again we have the combination of female brown feet, blood and a bright lenga, as the heroine dances for the hero, with the blood and charades of glass signifying the intensity of love and pain she feels for him. The allure of an image framed in orientalized exotica, where South Asian women are foregrounded, can, as we have seen above, exist for South Asian women themselves. They are, however, drawn to it through an enchantment that is not confined to orientalized desires; it is not trapped in the search for the ethnic and the exotic. Rather these narratives offer a different imaginary in the very reconstitution of memory. In many ways, it is a search for the familiar in a public terrain where representation has been overly negative or denied altogether (Hall, 1997). Intimate images of beauty, texture, touch and colour are evoked. This imagination is not limited by, although undeniably it is touched by, sealed visions of exotic unknown distant lands. Instead, it connects with a history of aesthetic alterity which has existed alongside the racism that has been targeted at what are read as South Asian sounds, colours and smells, long before it became 'cool' to be Asian. The textuality of this other sensibility, which is no doubt along the way intermingled with racism and orientalism, is not routed in a closed tribal world or an ethnic enclave, as it is so often understood, but rather liminally adorned in the embodiment of post-colonial lives. While this perception of bodies, cloth and decoration is influenced by the aesthetics found in mainstream fashion, it is not dependent upon these trends. Even the recent legitimation by the structures of whiteness of bindhies, mendhies and all things colourful is received in a formation that interacts with it, receives it, but does not forget how racist aesthetics have policed South Asians. Moreover,neither does it disappear with the course of EPOSs. There remains a sublime sense of aesthetics and memory that quietly and sometimes loudly, as chronicled in the stream of conversation outlined by this

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article, refuses erasure in the face of assimilation

and amnesia in the newly found

pantomime of bindhies and mendhies, calling for a settling of accounts before the fanfare can be. This paper is a small gesture towards the restoration of a different remembering and sense of textuality.

author biography
Nirmal Puwar's research includes questions attention ac.uk. of space and bodies, with particular to 'race', gender and class. She is a Senior Research Fellow/Lecturer in

Sociology at University College Northampton. Contact: nirmal.puwar@northampton.

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