Abstract

Picture a tube of red lipstick travelling as a gift, and as an interpellative device, from one young Nigerian woman in London to another in Lagos. A picture of technologies of femininity and brands of feminism in motion, it is also one of the forging of new transnational subjectivities by capitalist consumer culture, diasporic movements and geopolitics. Drawing on a research project on ‘spectacularly feminine’ self-fashioning among young Lagos women, from which this picture derives empirically, this talk will offer methodological reflections on how the study of fashion and beauty in Africa can contribute to rethinking African Studies.

Simidele Dosekun is a lecturer in media and cultural studies at the University of Sussex, before which she was a fellow in qualitative methodology at the London School of Economics. She is currently completing a book manuscript provisionally entitled Fashioning Postfeminism: Spectacular femininity and transnational culture in Nigeria