Abstract
This article examines the political assertions that are central to where and
how the African Diaspora is situated within Western culture. The article
will examine how the Diaspora uses fashion objects in social and visual
(re)constructions of self. A contention is that the relationship between the
dominant mainstream culture and the African Diaspora is insecure,
encompassing opposing referential territories that are revealed in this
article as either real or utopian.
The contemporary African Diaspora consists of the descendants of
people who were enslaved and transported from Africa between 1430 and Queen Victoria’s reign. The Atlantic slave trade involved the collusion ofAfrican, European and American slave traders. At the cornerstone of slavery was the Black African, whose image had been reconfigured and
made racial, a feat perpetrated prior to slavery throughout European and American superstructures.