An 'excess of the normal

Luxury and difference in Polish fur critique

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2391091
AutoresSiobhan Magee (0000-0002-8366-3154, University of Edinburgh, autor de correspondencia)
Año2016
Volumen21
Número3
Páginas277-295
Fecha de publicación2016-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183516646405
OpenAlexW2346183847
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas31

This article calls upon fieldwork carried out in Kraków in order to analyse charges of 'luxury' in Polish fur critique. It draws from commentary both from 'card-carrying' members of Polish animal rights organizations and comparatively off-the-cuff remarks of those reflecting on fur's provocativeness, without participating in the animal rights movement. In Central and Eastern European socialist and postsocialist contexts alike, luxury has often held a dialectical relationship with 'normality'. The article argues that the meaning of luxury that emerges in Polish fur critique can be aptly described as 'an excess of the normal'. Power, with which fur is frequently associated, is conceptualized not only as residing in the hands of elites but in the 'normal' and normalizing material culture that fur embodies. The 'visibility' of fur as outdoor clothing is critical in this regard. In discussing fur's luxuriousness, themes of gendered and generational power and of the shortcomings of ethical consumption as a mode of political resistance come to the fore

Aesthetics · Clothing · Consumption (sociology · Dialectic · Epistemology · Ideology · Meaning (existential · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Resistance (ecology · Social science · Sociology · European history and politics · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy · Polish-Jewish Holocaust Memory Studies