The New Normal.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault introduced a concept of ‘heterotopia,’ as a place of ‘other’ and a discursive and transformative space that embodies ideas of both utopia and dystopia. Heterotopia represents a world set within a world that both mirrors and challenges the outside world.

The arts, literature, and music, have long excelled at creating heterotopias, inventing imaginary worlds, and providing spaces and scenarios in which to inhabit and test ideas that both mirror and challenge the outside world. In this regard, a creative process or operation can be regarded as a legitimate form of activism and progenitor of change.

As is increasingly apparent, a metaphorical mirror is now being held up to fashion, urgently inviting the industry to reflect on dubitable business practices and models. Modification and revision will need to be radical in certain regards – issues of environmental stewardship and ethical practices, for instance. But, there may also be judicious need for adjustment in other, seemingly less minacious areas too – what fashion actually is, how it is taught, promoted, communicated, or endorsed, for example.

But, where there is common agreement on widely accepted failings of neo-liberalist business practice, on other matters it can be harder to establish pervasive interpretations of good or bad, especially when they are things that people are not quite sure about. In this regard, we might pause to consider the potential complexities and perils of ‘indifference.’

An absence of acuity towards things we might consider unimportant, that do not directly affect us, progressive detachment from adverse events around the world, or even increased reliance on forms of convenience culture, may indeed prove be precarious.

If we do not constantly exercise ‘alertness,’ developing conditions of indifference can inadvertently lead to an individual or collective surrendering of control, and to incipient forms of autocracy. Furthermore, we might acknowledge that states of affiliation, familiarity and ‘normalization’ can, in some cases, represent the very first steps towards states of totalitarianism.

Accordingly, we must consider how we clearly position ourselves on prosaic and commonplace matters as much as perceived matters of profundity. We must constantly question and challenge the notion of normalisation, and if and how we align with any situation, argument, or agenda.

By behaving so, we may become (co) authors, or (co) editors of new expressions of dissatisfaction and activism that can lead to new forms of consensus and harmony. In turn, this can establish new forms of cumulative insight, cooperation, and agency for us.

But, any new world or existence we wish to invent can only ever be established if we fully accept our individual and collective responsibility in constructing the very particular frameworks required for ‘world-building.’

Within fashion, if we understand that a simultaneous ending of an old order and embarkation of a new ideology is necessary, we must also concede that our denial of the old and our endorsement of the new must be absolute, resolute and clear.

Here, we will need to employ a very emphatic “yes,” or a very emphatic “no,” rather than any ambivalent “maybe.”