Media Technologies of the Self

Though fashion could be understood as the vehicle of identity, it is also the complexity of daily practices and operations in which performativity and productivity are coming into collision at the same time. Marshall McLuhan’s most quoted line says that the medium itself is the message, which contains another medium, that is, a message, which has an impact, shaped by its context. McLuhan stated that various forms of media could be read as extensions of the human body, thus clothes or even cars might be able to turn into agents of media history. Michel Foucault used the term “technologies of the self” in his belated theory, which signifies all the operations through which a subject defines and identifies themself. Reading these two different approaches of technology together, the lecture tries to explore the diverse and complex relations between body and sexuality, body and fashion, fashion and identity in contemporary culture.