Stitching the Material, Weaving the Voice. A Review of Regina Root's Couture & Consensus: Fashion and Politics in Postcolonial Argentina

• Sarah Moody ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Alabama
• Localización: A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina, ISSN-e 1548-7083, Vol. 9, Nº. 3, 2012 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Primavera 2012), págs. 448-452
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In Couture & Consensus, Regina A. Root studies the Argentine public sphere in the nineteenth century, a time of strictly coded discourse in both the verbal and visual spheres. In much of this period, what we later have come to call national consolidation seemed all but impossible, and something as trivial as a color choice placed a garment-wearer firmly in one political camp or the other. Root’s fundamental questions in this volume focus on identity and its expression through the material culture and discourses associated with fashion. In her study, the quotidian objects of the Rosas era take on a vitality and meaning that help us to understand the ideologies that saturated these artifacts. In Root’s own words, “Couture & Consensus argues that dress served as a critical expression of political agency and citizenship during the struggle to forge the Argentine nation.” A great strength of the monograph is its firm anchoring of Argentina’s modern beginnings in the present moment, such that any visitor to the country today will be able to see--in the clothing and advertisements around he--that the issues Root elucidates continue to structure public discourse in Argentina in the twenty-first century. The result is a rich, detailed, and enjoyable study of the Rosas period that gives contemporary readers an interpretive tool and a model that is both solidly grounded and varied in its approach.