Common threads : clothing the body in post-9/11 political violence

This thesis examines the relationship between clothing and political violence through an interdisciplinary approach to five case studies situated within the War on Terror. Starting with the attacks of 11 September 2001, it analyses their occurrence within New York Fashion Week and consequent mediation by fashion writers and designers. After demonstrating how US citizens were militarised through clothing consumerism in 9/11’s aftermath, Chapter II discusses the early years of the US invasion into Iraq, critiquing the cultural conceptualisation of a ‘civilising force’. The failures of this concept are explored in analysis of the abuses enacted at Abu Ghraib prison, which establish the conditions for the political violence of the so-called Islamic State, the aesthetics of which, particularly those which were US-derived, are examined in Chapter III. The thesis then examines the repercussions of the War on Terror on domestic soil in the US Opioid Crisis. The disenfranchisement of identities discussed in Chapter IV — military, veteran and civilian — culminates in the rise of the militarised far- and alt-right through Donald Trump’s political ascendency, and the political violence enacted at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, analysed in Chapter V. Power, and how it is aestheticised, granted, and denied through clothing, is fundamental to this thesis, which draws upon Giorgio Agamben’s interpretations of a ‘state of exception’, ‘sovereign’, and homo sacer. In studying the War on Terror through these five case studies, analysed through clothing and encompassing media, literature and images to discuss the political, cultural and aesthetic representations of the events, I argue that whilst clothing is commonly perceived as either marking individuality or informing group identity, it highlights the commonalities as well as demarcations between opposing identities within the War on Terror, and the precarious conditionality that underpins these identities and the power they wield.