‘Savage Beauties’. Alexander McQueen’s performance of posthuman bodies

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the question of how fashion can reconfigure a human body out of its once common generic and symbolic modes of representation. Immersed in the bioscientific and biotechnological environment, a body has become an increasingly complex and contradictory entity that cannot be considered from a traditional perspective or conceptualization. Alexander McQueen’s projects and shows addressed these concerns against the background of the mainstream fashion industry’s socio-cultural normalization, opening up the body to new channels of interactivity with the nonhuman. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theoretical framework and its new materialist reworking, this article discusses the human and nonhuman relationality in the designer’s works to show how multiple modes of intervention of different matters trigger constant metamorphosis of body processes. Ultimately, the article reveals how, thanks to their material extensions, McQueen’s posthuman bodies are assemblages that unfold new forms of subjectivities.

KEYWORDS:

• Posthuman bodies
• performativity
• new materialism
• affective fashion
• Alexander McQueen

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Justyna Stępień is an Assistant Professor in Literary and Cultural Studies in the English Department of Szczecin University, Poland. She is the editor of Redefining Kitsch and Camp in Literature and Culture (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014) and the author of British Pop Art and Postmodernism (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015). Her research interests encompass the transmediatization of cultural productions, posthuman subjectivity analysed from a transdisciplinary perspective and new materialism. She has published essays on popular culture, postmodern literature, film and the visual arts, combining her interests in philosophy and critical theory.