This article explores what it meant for us (the authors) to work with decolonial debates and approaches within the teaching of fashion history. By reflecting on the ways we live our politics, not only in our teaching but also in the writing of this journal article, our aim is not to model ideal course structures or decolonial techniques, but more to argue for the importance of shifts in consciousness as the single most important strategy. For it is in the transparency and positionality of our practices as teachers and writers -including a carefully negotiated resistance to and compliance with the expected structures of teaching and writing -that we suggest what a decolonial praxis could entail and what its value might be, together with the potential longer term impacts of decolonising the curriculum.There are many highly dedicated and inspiring educators who want to see a broader curriculum and who want to respond to current debates around decolonising cultural institutions. This goal, as direct as it sounds, is an impossibility without deeper systemic changes to behaviours, expectations, habits and value systems. In the face of this, how can any one person make a difference on their own? And, more profoundly, can any changes be accomplished to allow individuals to teach from the
Decolonial approaches foreground the necessity for design historians to rethink their methodologies and terms of debate to recognize the impact of colonial legacies. Only then is it possible to make changes toward social and cognitive justice. This piece explores new models for working collectively with history and memory across oral registers to include the colloquial and moments of pause, of taking breath.
In mid-2020, four design historians teamed up to develop experimental, multimedia methods of working to explore new critical design histories. By using “otherwise” methods to look, listen, and read closely, this piece foregrounds the making of space for new interpretations of thinking and writing. The tensions between memories, stories, and histories are interpreted and challenged using concepts such as breath, voice, palimpsest, circle and rhythm. Exploring translation, opacity, embodiment, positionality, and nonlinearity emerged as crucial to questioning the terms under which design history can be transformed.
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