Fashion Matters: La Sape and Vestimentary Codes in Transnational Contexts and Urban Diasporas

Abstract

The focus of this essay is provided by a discussion of the symbiotic relationship between Paris as a narrative construct in the minds of its former African colonial subjects, and the complex manner in which urban spaces and narrative productions are simultaneously reconfigured according to the cultural, political, and sociological agendas of cultural practitioners. Using a theoretical context inspired by a transnational understanding of performance and identity, the manner in which dress codes (the phenomenon of "la sape") have marked the experiences of the Congolese diasporas in France are explored as they relate to the 1998 novel by Alain Mabanckou, Bleu-Blanc-Rouge.

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