Historicizing and Authenticating African Dress: Diaspora Double Consciousness and Narratives of Heritage and Community

Consumption Markets & Culture

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Historicizing and authenticating African dress: diaspora double consciousness and narratives of heritage and community

Benét DeBerry-Spence & Elif Izberk-Bilgin

To cite this article: Benét DeBerry-Spence & Elif Izberk-Bilgin (2019): Historicizing and authenticating African dress: diaspora double consciousness and narratives of heritage and community, Consumption Markets & Culture, DOI: 10.1080/10253866.2019.1661245 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2019.1661245

Published online: 05 Sep 2019.

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Historicizing and authenticating African dress: diaspora double consciousness and narratives of heritage and community Benét DeBerry-Spencea and Elif Izberk-Bilginb aDepartment of Managerial Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL, USA; bDepartment of Management Studies, University of Michigan-Dearborn, Dearborn, MI, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY This research examines consumer authentication in the context of African Received 5 January 2018 Americans’ consumption practices and discourses of African dress. Accepted 26 August 2019 Through multi-sited ethnographic ﬁeldwork, our work reveals historical KEYWORDS and ideological aspects of authentication. We identify three Authenticity; African authentication practices, namely, representing resistance, educating ’ diaspora; cultural history; one s own, and journeying to the motherland. Our data reveal the collective memory; ideology; importance of double consciousness and historicizing in the double consciousness authentication of consumption objects among diaspora consumers. Collectively, our ﬁndings extend previous research by demonstrating that investigating and historicizing heritage are critical motives undergirding consumers’ quest for authenticity.

Black Panther, a predominantly African-American cast movie, hit box office records by surpassing the performance of iconic movies such as Titanic and Jurassic World and by generating $1.3 billion within three months of its release (Mendelson 2018). The movie quickly became a global cultural phenomenon, inspiring African dress themed screening parties around the world (eventbrite.com), impressing the tennis icon Serena Williams to don a Black Panther style outfit at the French Open (Ramaswamy 2018), spurring Black Panther themed prom sendoff parties (Ileto 2018), starting the fashion movement #WakandaCameToSlay, and most importantly, prompting the first Wakanda Conference for “Black people to celebrate … [their] beautiful blackness” in their African dress (wakandacon2018.com). Notably, across all these events African clothing is a central motif. It is worth asking then, why would Black diaspora consumers, most of whom have not even been to Africa, wear African garb? And more generally, what motivates these consumers to represent and pay homage to Africa on their body, whether it is through the traditional African Kente cloth, the dashiki tunic, the kufi cap, or Afrocentric jewelry? Past research might explain this behavior as indicative of consumers’ quest for meaning and an authentic identity in the face of late modernity’s disorienting consequences (Featherstone 1991; Arnould and Price 2000; Bardhi, Eckhardt, and Arnould 2012). However, this perspective is grounded on certain assumptions that inadvertently confine our understanding of consumer authentication. Specifically, previous work presumes that the traditional sources of meaning such as tribes, communities, and nations, which used to anchor self-identity (Beverland and Farrelly 2010), have been undermined in late modernity, creating a great deal of existential uncertainty and anxiety. It is thus further assumed that individuals have since been seeking for meaning in the marketplace and trying to construct an authentic identity with the trappings of consumer culture (Arnould and Price 1993; Price and Arnould 1999; Holt 2002; Rose and Wood 2005; Leigh, Peters, and Shelton

CONTACT Benét DeBerry-Spence [email protected] Department of Managerial Studies, University of Illinois at Chicago, 601 S. Morgan Street, M/C 294, Chicago, IL 60607, USA © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group 2 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN

2006). Not surprisingly then, existing research explains the rising consumer interest in hyperreal and extraordinary products and experiences (e.g. reality shows, river rafting, mountain climbing, obstacle racing, and pilgrimage) as a quest for authenticity predominantly driven by a desire to mark social distinction and to escape the existential anxieties of modern life (Arnould and Price 1993; Rose and Wood 2005; Tumbat and Belk 2010; Scott, Cayla, and Cova 2017; Husemann and Eckhardt 2019). In short, the quest for authenticity is generally understood in consumer research as an individualist and recreational pursuit of status (Potter 2010). While these studies have been helpful in explaining some contemporary consumer behavior, we suggest several shortcomings remain. First, past research does not account for cases in which the crucial identity-anchoring historical knowledge such as ancestry and heritage is either missing or highly contested. Consider the consumer groups who have faced drastic identity traumas brought about by war, ideological conflict, and forced displacement in recent history; their knowledge of heritage is severely disrupted and even historically distorted. Primarily the diasporas of involuntary immigrants such as the African slaves and the Holocaust Jews, but also forcibly displaced populations such as the Romani (gypsies), Native Americans, the peoples of partitioned states during the Colonial period, and refugees represent cases where we have little understanding of authenticating motivations and practices in the context of contested historical knowledge. Second, because the current authenticity research has not investigated the aforementioned cases, it is largely silent on the role of historical and ideological forces on consumer authentication. For example, little is known about the role that the dominant cultural groups’ assimilationist ideologies and practices play on the diasporas’ quest for an authentic identity. And consequently, a third shortcoming is that existing authenticity research overlooks the importance of historicizing in situations in which consumer historical knowledge is contested, as may be the case with involuntary immigrants and their diaspora. Here, we con- ceive historicizing in a manner similar to what Levy (2008) describes as efforts made to place something in historical context, that involves reclaiming a past and directing it toward a present and future status. Collectively, these shortcomings represent a critical gap in our understanding of consumer authenticity because examining the ideological drivers of consumer authentication, particularly in the context of diasporas of involuntary immigrants, may broaden our horizons by reveal- ing motivations and practices that have been unaccounted for in previous scholarship. To redress this gap, we ask why and how the descendants of involuntary immigrants authenticate consumption objects. In particular, we conduct an ethnographic study of African-Americans’ consumption practices and discourses of African dress. The term African American specifically refers to members of the African diasporas in the United States associated with the Atlantic slave trade, as opposed to African diasporas associated with the contemporary movement of Africans to different parts of the world (Palmer 2000). We focus on African-Americans whose African ancestors, because of the transatlantic slave trade, experienced the largest forced migration. And, among the involuntary immigrant diaspora groups -a group that includes millions of Holocaust Jews, the Romani (gypsies), Native Americans, refugees, and those forced to move due to climate change – Africans, who became enslaved and their descendants, represent the largest community that was subject to forced and systematic assimilation. The latter included changing every aspect of the native culture and everyday life1 (e.g. language, spiritual beliefs, clothing). Classified as personal chattel of their owners, African American slaves for all purposes had no rights. The subsequent establishment of slave codes reinforced their status as property and helped to ensure control and domination over them. We argue that such traumatizing experiences (e.g. being forced to abandon their native culture, local language, traditional dress, religious beliefs) shape the identity work of diaspora for generations to come as in the case of descendants of African slaves. As such, we posit that when contemporary Afri- can-Americans consume heritage-inspired products and experiences like donning African Kente cloth as in the example in the opening paragraph, their authentication practices are informed more by a desire to resolve ideological tensions regarding African-American identity and to inquire

1Other groups subject to forced and systematic assimilation are Native Americans and the Romani. CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 3 their contested past than to seek status and to escape the ordinary. For example, research suggests that African-Americans, throughout their history in America, have used African textiles to display a counterculture ideology2 and consumer activism, not only during the Black Power Movement3 of the 1960s, but also dating as far back as the early 1600s when African slaves first arrived on American shores (Boateng 2004). We believe such ideological and historical motivations underlying consumer authentication have not been addressed in previous authenticity research (Arnould and Price 2000; Rose and Wood 2005; Leigh, Peters, and Shelton 2006; Beverland and Farrelly 2010; Tumbat and Belk 2010; Scott, Cayla, and Cova 2017; Husemann and Eckhardt 2019). We offer several theoretical contributions. First, we identify three authenticating practices, namely, representing resistance, educating one’s own, and journeying to the motherland. We use the terms authenticating and authentication interchangeably; and, we define it as an ongoing process through which consumers engage in practices “to display, impugn, vie for, and enact forms of (ethnic) identity” (Shenk 2007, 195). Collectively, our practices demonstrate that investigating ancestral history and historicizing heritage through the consumption of African clothing are critical motives undergirding consumers’ quest for authenticity. We extend previous research by showing that consumer goals related to authenticity are not solely to confer authenticity to the self or marketplace offerings, but also to investigate and historicize uncertainties pertaining to consumer heritage. In doing so, we respond to Beverland and Farrelly’s (2010) call for research that shifts focus from the authentic/inauthentic dichotomy to how consumers reconcile interpretations, and repeated calls to explore “cultural history through the commodity form” (Arnould and Thompson 2005, 876). Second, our focus on diaspora consumers allows us to uncover the importance of double consciousness for consumer authentication. Double consciousness refers to the “two-ness” of the African-American experience; and in particular, what Du Bois (1897) conceptualized as the “internal conflict in the African American individual between what is [was] ‘African’ and what is [was] ‘American’”(Bruce 1992, 301). We find that this “two-ness” of the diaspora experience informs the quest for heritage and the authenticating practices in which African-American consumers engage. To the best of our knowledge, the role of double consciousness on consumption practices and discourses, in particular on consumer authentication, have not been fully examined in consumer behavior literature before.

Theoretical background Authenticity Research in art history and tourism in the 1960s conceptualized authenticity as a judgment of genuineness that helps distinguish the “real” from the fake (Trilling 1972) in an increasingly commodi- tized world, replete with pseudo-events and illusions constructed by news media (Boorstin 1964; Trilling 1972). Echoing the anxieties of the late modernity that imprinted the cultural zeitgeist, scho- lars described authenticity as a modern ideal (Trilling 1972; Berger 1973) emerging as a reﬂexive response to the dissolution of social ties with the rise of market economy and secularism. As such, they argued that it involved the alienated and disenchanted modern individual’s continuous search for meaning “at other times and in other places” (MacCannell 1976/2013, 148) and for “the pristine, the primitive … untouched by modernity” (Cohen 1988, 374). A similar view of authenticity is reﬂected in marketing literature (Stern 1994; Costa and Bamossy 1995; Belk and Costa 1998; Grayson and Shulman 2000; Grayson and Martinec 2004). Research has

2Ideology is defined as “a world-view readily found in the population, including sets of ideas and values that cohere, that are used publicly to justify political stances, and that shape and are shaped by society” (Dawson 2001, 4). 3The Black Power Movement is generally understood to be a 1960s and 1970s movement associated with the term and concept of “Black Power,” which Kwame Ture (formerly known as Stokely Carmichael) and Carmichael and Hamilton’s(1967, 44) define as “a call for black people in this country to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community. It is a call for black people to begin to define their own goals, to lead their own organizations and to support those organizations. It is a call to reject the racist institutions and values of this society.” 4 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN argued that globalization and hyperreality motivate individuals’ quest for meaning and an authentic identity (Arnould and Price 2000; Rose and Wood 2005; Leigh, Peters, and Shelton 2006; Beverland and Farrelly 2010). For example, Arnould and Price (2000, 143) contend that consumers negotiate the “pervasive uncertainty” and “dreadful multiplicity of existential choices” that globalization brings about through consumption or, more specifically, through authenticating acts (i.e. “self-referential behaviors actors feel reveal or produce the ‘true’ self”) and authoritative performances (i.e. “collective displays aimed at invention or refashioning cultural traditions”). Other researchers have explored authenticity in contexts characteristic of contemporary consumer culture, such as market-mediated relationships and hyperreal experiences (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Beverland 2005, 2006; Rose and Wood 2005; Leigh, Peters, and Shelton 2006; Beverland, Lindgreen, and Vink 2008; Chronis and Hampton 2008; Beverland and Farrelly 2010). More recently, the quest for authenticity was also found to be an underlying theme in the consumption of extraordinary experiences (Tumbat and Belk 2010; Husemann and Eckhardt 2019; Scott, Cayla, and Cova 2017). Extending prior con- ceptualizations of authenticity as judgments of genuineness (Trilling 1972; Grayson and Shulman 2000), studies have found that: (1) authenticity involves consumers’ negotiation of paradoxes inherent in consumption experiences (Rose and Wood 2005; Chronis and Hampton 2008); (2) assessments of authenticity are contingent on consumer goals, and thus the pursuit of authenticity is multifaceted (Leigh, Peters, and Shelton 2006; Beverland and Farrelly 2010); and (3) brands can provide authenticating narratives for consumers’ identity projects by inspiring them, romancing them, or simply evoking communal nostalgia for seemingly simpler and less commercial times (Brown, Kozinets, and Sherry 2003; Thompson, Rindfleisch, and Arsel 2006). In sum, prior studies have offered invaluable insights into the nature, types, process, and goals underpinning perceptions of authenticity; and as Potter (2010) notes in his in fluential book The Authenticity Hoax, authenticity is largely understood as an individualist and leisurely exercise in search of enchantment in a disenchanted world and an escape from the mundane, which paradoxically results in an endless cycle of status-seeking. However, past authenticity research has not examined this concept beyond the customary sampling frame of mainstream consumers, specifically, “affluent, white, Anglo-Saxons of European descent” (Burton 2009, 184), whose identity anchoring knowledge (i.e. racial/ethnic ties, language, religion, and culture) have not been systematically eroded or historically contested by the dominant class ideologies. As such, existing research fails to capture the nuances of consumer authentication in the face of ideological and historical forces that render consumer identity ambiguous, disputed, and even stigmatized. One context where the role of ideological and historical forces on consumer authentication sur- face is diaspora consumers, particularly the case of involuntary immigrants. Notably, involuntary immigrants’ (and their descendants’) experiences are quite distinct from migrants, who willingly decide to emigrate to a foreign country primarily for economic reasons and have the option to return to their native countries (unlike involuntary immigrants whose mobility has been controlled and restricted through laws). Consumer behavior research on migrants is vast (e.g. Peñaloza 1994; Aske- gaard, Arnould, and Kjeldgaard 2005) and suggests that these consumers experience cultural discontinuities due to being separated from loved ones, home culture, and possessions (Chytkova 2011; Dion, Sitz, and Rémy 2011; Fernandez, Veer, and Lastovicka 2011; Vihalemm and Keller 2011). While these discontinuities may represent threats to the migrant identity to the extent that their existing knowledge, skills, and ways of being have limited value in their new homeland, it is important to note that such cultural discontinuities do not compare to the significant rupture that many involuntary immigrants have been facing following the methodical erosion of language, religion, and culture since the Colonial period. Against this historical backdrop, we argue that in addition to the purposes of escaping from the mundane and engaging in status games, authenticating possessions may serve purposes such as investigating one’s heritage, reconstructing a group identity, restoring a sense of historical continuity, or contesting stigmatizing representations. Yet these nuances are minimally addressed in extant authenticity research and thus represent an important theoretical gap. Building on prior studies on consumer authenticity, we specifically explore why and how CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 5

African-American consumers authenticate African dress. Fundamental to our theoretical account is the concept of double consciousness, an important diaspora experience, which we introduce next.

Double consciousness The concept of double consciousness described by American social scientist W.E.B. Du Bois in his 1907 book, The Soul of Black Folk, was part of a rich body of work dedicated to investigating the “status and conditions of Afro-Americans in a range of activities” (Crouch and Benjamin 2002, 104) and in particular the “problems [these faced] … as they tried to find their way as freed men” (105). In this post-slavery context and in the midst of repressive Jim Crow segregation laws in the American South, Du Bois conceptualized double-consciousness to refer to the “two-ness” of being African American in various ways. One example refers to the “practical racism that excluded every Black American from the mainstream society” that created the identity dilemma for Afri- can-Americans of “being both an American and not an American” at the same time (Bruce 1992, 304). The second aspect of double consciousness naturally extends from African Americans’ experience as formerly subjugated individuals (whose cultural, religious, and linguistic ties to their native land were systematically eroded during slavery) who were later recognized as citizens with an Amer- ican identity. Therefore, this second interpretation of double consciousness refers to the internal dilemma of distinguishing between what was African and what was American (Bruce 1992). While double consciousness has been subject to various interpretations over time, it is commonly understood to involve a type of cultural conflict, in which African Americans may at times experience a sense of existing between two opposing cultural forces (Allen 1997; Shaw 2013; Kumasi 2012). The understanding and managing of the tensions created by this rendered African Americans in the position of virtual outsider (Favor 1999); That is, “having a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others …”(Du Bois 1969, 45). This has been highlighted as a characteristic of the African- American consumer identity across generations, despite social class and distinct consumption ideologies, strategies, and tactics (Williams and Qualls 1989; Mullins 2002; Crockett 2017). Although largely conceived from an understanding of the African-American experience, double consciousness is not limited to the study of African Americans. It has been used in a variety of theories and contexts such as in studies of immigration and diasporic ethnicities (Dayal 1996), intercultural and transnational identity formation (Gilroy 1993), ethno-centric pedagogy (Lee, Lomotey, and Shujaa 1990), and multiculturalism and post-colonialism (Gilroy 2005). In these studies, double consciousness serves as an analytical framework to explain how various political and historical influences can cause long-term identity disruptions, loss of long-standing cultural ties (e.g. religion, language), and severe changes in social status, such as those experienced as a result of armed conflict or involuntary displacement (Marable 2006). Importantly, double consciousness can also reveal how individuals and groups reclaim, recreate, perform, and celebrate long-lost histories and traditions following these personal or collective identity disruptions (Allen 1997; Jones 2001). Consumption, then, becomes an important context in which double consciousness aids in the “interpretation of complexity” of those consumers living in a space of cultural in-betweenness brought about by traumatized identities (Marable 2006,19). For example, one can understand how a distinct diaspora identity across generations intersects with consumption practices and discourses rife with political and historical meaning (Crockett 2017). Fur- thermore, consumption can unveil how consumers recreate a collective memory or history, reclaiming along the way crucial elements of their culture such as religion, race, ethnicity, dress, and language. Given this precedence, we believe the concept of double consciousness can provide insight into consumer authentication, as well as the importance of cultural dress and heritage.

Method Our investigation into consumer authentication centered on African clothing consumption (i.e. Afri- can or African-style clothing worn by African Americans). Textiles embody and reﬂect the 6 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN complexity and diversity of consumer interpretations of authentication as well as the symbolism often associated with the consumption of cultural products. In addition, as Turner ([1980] 1993) notes, dress has a dual quality; that is, it faces inward and outward and therefore encourages the exploration of both individual and collective identities. That textiles maintain personal, social, cultural, spiritual, political, and historical properties, allows them to be interpreted in a variety of ways (Weiner and Schneider 1989) and to communicate in ways Western clothing cannot (Martin 1994). African clothing is also a particularly mobile and ﬂexible medium in transcultural networks (Rovine 2013) and thus provides a visually public means of uncovering the personal meanings and processes underlying authentication. Our study included outer garments, and we use the terms dress, clothing, and so on, interchangeably. We did not include jewelry on its own in our study, but headgear, having both African-style fabric and form, fell under the rubric of clothing. Figures 1 and 2 provide examples of African style fabric and clothing. We conducted a multisite ethnography to facilitate a holistic understanding of how consumers construct varying interpretations and strategies of consumer authentication. This study included three consumption settings that represent popular U.S. platforms for consumer expression with Afri- can dress: educational settings (i.e. schools); recreational settings (e.g. parties/celebrations, theater performances); and sacred settings (i.e. churches). These settings also align with the African dress categories used in previous research (Ross 1998). Informants were African Americans, both males and females, who are the main and almost sole purchasers of African clothing in the U.S. Their ages were between early twenties and mid-sixties. Participants were recruited in public forums (e.g. retails outlets) and through snowball sampling practices. In this paper, we use the term Afri- can-American and Black interchangeably. To uncover their interpretation and use of African clothing pertaining to consumer authentication, our data included in-depth and open-ended interviews with eight core informants (Appendix) that most often lasted one hour or more. These interviews involved open-ended questions such as personal background and clothing knowledge, purchases, and preferences, etc. Additionally, both interviews and observations concerned the role of African-style clothing in consumers’ lives as well as an understanding of the meanings of this clothing in various consumption contexts. Using Coulter et al. (2005) format, we subsequently accompanied the participant to a consumption setting (i.e. education, recreational, sacred) on multiple occasions, where we interviewed participants with questions that the situation and context dictated (e.g. meaning of clothing in a religious setting). Overall, we interviewed each of the core informants at least nine times, for a minimum of three interviews in each of the consumption settings. We extensively observed the day-to-day activities of these informants while they wore African clothing in all three consumption settings. Observation of an

Figure 1. Top made of mud cloth material. CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 7

Figure 2. Consumer wearing boubou top. informant in a single consumption setting took place over several days to more than a week. We incorporated three types of African-style clothing consumption in the study: (1) pervasive consumption, representing consumers who almost exclusively wore African-style clothing (i.e. rarely wore Western style clothing); (2) everyday consumption, representing consumers who routinely wore African and Western clothing; and (3) episodic consumption, representing consumers who wore African clothing primarily on special occasions (e.g. during Black history month, to church). The differences and similarities among consumers (e.g. gender, age), consumption settings, and types of clothing facilitated triangulation across data sources. Data variety also enabled the identification of consumer similarities and differences as well as emic and etic representations of informant Afri- can-style clothing meanings and authenticating practices. We used multiple methods to collect and record data (e.g. audiotape, written field notes, pho- tography per Arnould and Wallendorf (1994)) and regularly reviewed interview tapes to guide future interviews (Schouten 1991). Transcribed data became an autonomous body of data (Thompson, Locander, and Pollio 1989) that subsequently informed our interpretation and analysis. Following grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967), we utilized an open, flexible approach to understand informants’ interpretations of African clothing and the various ways they view their world, themselves, and how they wear African clothing in everyday life. Beginning with initial data collection, data analysis was an on-going process that continued throughout the research study (Belk, Sherry, and Wallendorf 1988). Our analysis of data started with single words and groups of words and resulted in identification of common themes across informants. This initial set of themes were 8 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN subsequently collapsed to three main authenticating practices that conceptualize how informants actively engage in the process of consumer authentication and understand the sociohistorical, political, and cultural significance of this cultural attire.

Authenticating practices We explore the experiences of African-American consumers dressed in African clothing. Their narratives expose the deep meanings housed within African cloth and indicate the crossroads of Africa and America, present and past. From this vantage point, we observe the authenticating practices of “representing resistance,”“journeying to the Motherland,” and “educating one’s own.” These practices invoke political and historical discourses that informants carefully historicized as they confronted the disruptions from the diaspora experience. They also demonstrate consumer double consciousness and what Dixon (1994) identiﬁes as the desire to investigate and transmit Afrocentric wholeness in their heritage. In the following subsections, we unpack each of these practices.

Representing resistance As a communicative sign, dress can be pleasing and displeasing, especially when it is worn “out of place,” and it is this strategic positioning that allows clothing to function as a potent and powerful political language (Madison 2013). This is no less evident in the historical role of clothing in the lives of African Americans, dating back to slavery, when clothing was intertwined with and symbolized power and resistance. In this study, African-clothed consumers exercised the authenticating practice of “representing resistance” by (1) their perceptions of what others believe to be ethnic and racial visual inappropriateness in public spaces, (2) their feelings of comfort through the power historically rooted in the clothing they wear, and (3) the agency they believe this clothing aﬀords them. In this case, resistance reﬂects both the historical outcomes of African Americans’ struggles in the United States (Field 1990) and the current oppositional struggles they face. We use the remarks of an informant in her early sixties to demonstrate this practice.

Back in the day, the sixties and early seventies, we used to have a record store in the neighborhood. Everybody was wearing Afros [hairstyle] then and their dashikis and Blackness. It was not a big thing. But it was about Black Power then you know, our time. Blacks were getting out there and being heard and moving causes for our people forward. This clothing was powerful, but you know everybody was doing it. You walk down the street and it was normal.

Now, I go out to dinner once a month with my girlfriends and I dress like this [pointing to her outfit, which is a blue batik-colored, loose-fitting, tunic-style top with pants]. I look the same. I have an Afro now and I didn’t then though. We just go out on a girls night once a month and we eat and talk, enjoy company and you would be surprised that it’s not [only] the Whites sometimes that look. Don’t you know that this shouldn’t even be about them [referring to Whites]? Lots of people like African art and buy that, but when I see young people come into this section [referring to the clothing section of a store] I see that there are still some who aren’t afraid. So, it’s not over. No, it’s not over yet. (Shirley) For Shirley, the dashiki, a loose tunic-style shirt with motifs around the neck opening and the outer border, connotes “Black Power,” a term that Carmichael and Hamilton (1967, 44) defines as “a call for black people in [the United States] to unite, to recognize their heritage, to build a sense of community” and a call to “reject the racist institutions and values of this society.” Popular in the United States during the sixties and seventies, the dashiki was worn as a means of expressing one’s identity and roots. Shirley’s remarks indicate how African clothing offered and continues to offer a political commentary on African-Americanness in the United States. Consumers wearing this style of dress exemplify how subcultural styles possess the potential for political resistance (Heb- dige 1979) and show that dress can be used as a political act to expose differential relations of power (Niessen 2003). Contemporary consumer narratives also illustrate historicizing; that is, a shifting back and forth between different timeframes. Such is the case for Shirley, who alternates between CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 9 present-day African clothing meanings and tracing how African clothing meanings have developed to be that way through time. When historicizing, our consumers routinely reference the 1960s, when civil rights issues were at the forefront of American politics, supported by African leaders heavily promoting pan-Africanism as the first African countries achieved independence. Fashion in the sixties reflected this social instability and became an important symbol of protest against the establishment. For many consumers, African clothing was also a sign of intolerance to social and political barriers, and both physical appearance and social behavior were public displays of African-Americans’ ethnic consciousness and racial pride (White and White 1998). Today, donning African attire is an authenticating practice to both highlight past injustices and nourish the desire to overcome them. African-style clothing meanings are loaded with Black political ideologies (Crockett and Wallen- dorf 2004) that grossly effect interpretations of this clothing and its wearer, such that the African- clothed body becomes a site for identity politics to be played out and contested (Dawson 2001). Informants are fully aware of this and use their clothing to acknowledge perceived differentials that exist between races and to express resistance to oppressive situations. This style of dress allows informants to openly confront issues and people, both past and present, in ways that audiences cannot easily respond to, because one can easily say “don’t talk of race related matters,” but cannot as easily say “don’t wear certain clothing.” Such public displays of resistance also allow people to cross paths with the resistance exhibited by others or retrace it (Foucault 1991). Consumer visual representations of resistance also echo clothing usage by African slaves, who were brought to America and not allowed to transport items of any sort, including clothing. White slave owners imposed and reinforced a system (and subsequent law) of clothing that prohib- ited the wearing of certain forms of dress. These dress codes, however, were not always followed, and clothing was frequently used to mark differences, to express what it meant to be a slave, and to distinguish oneself as an individual (Foster 1997). African-American slaves also established cultural boundaries through demarcations of style, using clothing to build and stabilize their own communities as distinct from threatening White communities (White and White 1998). This demarcation provided them with a sort of freedom, enabling them to express pride and cultural values and to pre- serve heritage (Foster 1997). In much the same way as urban contemporary Black communities may display expressive clothing as a means of demarcating themselves from White suburbia, our informants use African-style clothing to express pride in their cultural heritage and to define their unique- ness in relation to White America. For many, the demarcation prompted by African dress brings to the forefront a keen sense of dua- lity pervasive to African-American identity in America; That is, the double consciousness that Du Bois described when he wrote “One ever feels his twoness … an American, a negro; two souls, two thoughts …”(Du Bois 1969, 45). African style clothing reifies an identity associated with Afri- can heritage and yet all the while an awareness of an American identity persists. Du Bois’ work largely spoke to the potential for cultural conflict when African Americans are forced to choose between their own culture and that of the dominant population (Allen 1997). Our data reveal a similar impending struggle, both on the part of the African-clothed consumer and at times the broader Afri- can-American community. Clothed in African attire, consumers not only contest mainstream Amer- ican cultural codes, they also challenge fellow African Americans’ identity positions. Two of our informants explained that some African Americans are focused on “us [Black] versus them [White], ” rather than using African clothing as a means to express pride in one’s heritage:

Some [African American] people just don’t understand and it starts a lot of confrontation over nothing, and then you get into a predicament that you don’t want to be in over something because they don’t know. (Jerome)

People [would] think that I was getting all up in their face and making some kind of statement, like I was trying to “act out,” you know, being militant and trying to make a point … even when this is actually my culture and so there’s nothing wrong with me wearing this, but people don’t seem to get that point. They think the boss is trying to be all Black Power and what not. (Brad) 10 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN

African Americans clothed in African style experience the double consciousness of “having a sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others …” (Du Bois 1969, 45), and recognize the potential for conflict their dress presents. At the turn of the century Du Bois argued that underlying African-American “double-sightedness” and “twoness” was the premise that “African Americans were torn by a desire to become full citizens within U.S. society, yet retain their distinctiveness as a group” (Allen 1997, 50). Although African-American citizenship is not questioned today in the same manner Du Bois described nor conceived as it was in the sixties, important schisms in American society remain, as does the desire for an African-Amer- ican collective identity. Consequently, informants indicate that some African Americans may not understand that though African-style clothing may look different from typical American clothing, the contrast can be used as a way to positively express African heritage and culture and that “looking” African is a good thing. It may also signify the importance one places on acknowledging an African heritage. Conflicting interpretations among African Americans today are rooted in the meanings of African clothing during the 1960s when some Black acti- vists wore African-style clothing, aiding in its use as a more direct transgressive symbol (Checker 2004). The legacy of collective Black activist meanings and various translations are illustrated in Alice’s remarks.

Many cultures are sure of themselves. They’re not as panicky as we [Blacks] are. It’s because we have not been allowed to … have our identity for so many generations that now … we can step out [said softly] and exhibit our ethnicity. We’re like on shaky grounds, like we wanna see what someone’s gonna say. I can show my Black ethnicity and everything … I can get into it and I won’t have to worry about people loo- kin’ at me crazy. You know I came through in the sixties and the seventies … a lot of our people, Black people, they weren’t proud of their culture. And so even at some of the churches you went to, if you wore Afrocentric outfits and stuff like that [people] still look at you strange like; like [you] should be ashamed. Some of them, especially older ones, that are eighty, seventy years old, they still have that “we should hide ourselves” [mentality] because they came through an era of fear that to promote your Blackness was to promote militancy. And in the early sixties, with the Black Power members … when you wore the stuff like that, when you wore a fro [referring to afro] and all that, you were like Black Panther or militant. And a lot of those people [referring to older people] still have that idea, and even today they have that ideology. Despite being aware that others disapprove of their clothing choice, consumers continue to challenge this contested intracultural terrain. To this extent, African clothing today both is and is not a form of militancy. On the one hand, African clothing unmistakably promotes “Blackness” and Black pride; on the other hand, it connotes a passive form of militancy, such as when consumers (e.g. Alice) keep wearing it to church despite disapproving church elders. African fashion is clearly perceived as embodying the experience of African diaspora’s collective suffering and tenacity in the United States, and thus it becomes what de Certeau (1984) describes as a channel for expressing resistance in everyday life and a means of offering liberat- ing potential for the consumers who wear it. Our data also reveal the struggles consumers face when confronted with the double consciousness their dress provokes and their subsequent attempts to weave a unified identity that is both Black and American. Authenticating their cultural dress, then, is not effortless. African-style clothing presents resistance as an experience that allows informants to construct and reconstruct identity in a way that is profoundly transformative (Gupta and Ferguson 1997). For example, resistance affords the creation of an African identity for those who have never been to Africa; likewise, it helps deepen their affinity with their African-American identity. Du Bois (1907) describes a similar two-ness of being African and American where there is a desire to “merge one’s [his] double self,” in a manner that does not “Africanize America” and likewise does not “bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism” (41). Informant remarks suggest an awareness of this as they try to stitch together the many historically rooted meanings of African clothing, such as Black solidarity and unity, pride in Black heritage, racial inequity, and militancy. CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 11

Journeying to the Motherland African-American dress behavior patterns are extensions of the African tradition and the authenticating practice of journeying to the Motherland bridges the transculturally clothed consumer to “the continent” and provides a safe passage between the past and the present. In this way, consumers are comforted in their ability to realize and maintain a relationship with their place of origin, something that diasporic Africans have sought since their forcible transportation to the Americas (Boateng 2004). Their journey is often less to today’s contemporary Africa than to an idealized traditional world that never existed (Rabine 2002); and for consumers the inconsistencies between these two is often inconsequential. This is consistent with Bisharat’s(1997) observation that as Palestinian refugees’ hopes to return home become increasingly remote, the memory of an intensely romanti- cized homeland replaces those of a real home. Our informants are far removed from the displace- ments of slavery and the speciﬁcs of their genealogy are often unknown. Consequently, attempts to make sense of things result in consumers constructing and situating themselves in an imagined community (Anderson 1991). These newly created surroundings let them feel at ease with themselves and thus give them a sense of homeyness. The following consumer narrative by Alice illus- trates this resettlement.

[The dress] I had, it was like a dashiki style, but it had gold and yellow and black stripes to it with the hair ornament [hair wrap] that went with it, and it had gold in the center of the wrap and a dashiki kind of dress that has a flair to it and gold down the front. Under the arm, that’s all gold and yellow, but the front is solid. Yeah, it was a nice one … In this outfit, I felt homey. I don’t know how you explain it [homey]. I didn’t feel awkward. I didn’t feel like I was looking strange or inappropriate or anything like that. I felt quite at home. I felt that if I was not here and I was there [in Africa], I would be sitting in the middle of a village. When authenticating through journeying, consumers partake in the “Mother Africa” ideology, in which they are surrounded by or situated within reconfigured and/or reinvented notions of Africa. Alice engages in a fantasmic travel of sorts that finds her situated around the campfire and dreaming herself back to a place she has never been, called “home.” Hooks (1997, 173) notes how “for black folks, reconstructing an archaeology of memory makes return possible, the journey to a place they [we] can never call home even as they [we] reinhabit it to make sense of present locations.” Along these lines, Alice moves between “here” and “there” and back and forth in time as she seeks to explore her cultural heritage and identity in the context of a mostly imagined ancestral nation and historical ancestors. In seeking heritage Alice creates a space in which to explore the (in) authenticity of her clothing and related African and African-Americanness and the search for self may be overshadowed by their search for a collective identity. Thus, similar to their African brethren, consumers may desire to know not “who am I” but “who are we” (Appiah 1993, 76); and, these investigations may enable them to better understand how they are constituted and who they are. By imagining a community, then, African-clothed consumers like Alice can create a common history and culture to which they belong. Furthermore, by remembering Africa, African Americans re-member themselves and facilitate continuities within the African diaspora (Dixon 1994). This authenticating practice, therefore, is like a homecoming; it is a way for consumers to re-member themselves to a community and culture. In this way, they piece together the past so that they can reside in the present. Informants’ use of clothing as a conduit between their current residence and an African “home” resonates with its use by African slave immigrants, whose clothing esthetic principles were both drawn from and creatively used to link them to West Africa (Lynch 1999). Examples of this style were “cloth gowns or wrappers” (White and White 1998, 7) resembling West African traditional dress forms that were worn over slave dresses to reflect the continuing importance of African culture. The developing clothing style or “African-American esthetic” used since slavery has included juxta- position of colors and patterns, and the way clothing is put together has its foundation in Western African clothing and strip loom weaving. Informants (e.g. Alice, donned in her colorful striped and solid outfit) enact a similar esthetic that traverses continents and cultures. 12 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN

African-style clothing esthetics also awaken a spiritual journey to the Motherland. In the following excerpt, Brad explains how the intricacies of the clothing and designs created by African weavers enable this re-placement:

It’s just the detailing and the time they [weavers] took to put the patterns together … there’s more time and effort and meaning put into putting these patterns and stuff together and when you wear them you get this whole kind of spiritual thing going on ‘cause of all the detailing and all the patterns that are inside these clothes that you’re wearing … It’s like my inner soul or part of my African spirit coming out of me or part of my ancestors are inside of me or something like that … realizing that at one time my ancestors wore that and ‘til this day still a lot of African people still wear a lot of this clothing. So for me, it’s like an inner spirit kind of thing for me to have those kind of clothing. African clothing is both beautiful to the eye and pleasing to the soul. Brad appreciates the craftsman- ship of the attire, specifically admiring the different Adinkra symbols stamped onto the cloth from which his outfit is made. Adinkra symbols, indigenous to the Asante peoples of Ghana, blend esthetic decorative elements and cultural values, with each symbol carrying its own meaning and history. Quite often informants did not know the indigenous significance of the symbols appearing on their clothes, but nonetheless appreciated the importance of and the opportunity to learn about these meanings. Clearly, authentication was not so much concerned with accuracy for our informants, in contrast to Chronis and Hampton’s(2008) visitors of Gettysburg, who insisted on factual authenticity. In Brad’s case, reflecting on the Adinkra symbols leads him to think about the Africans that have sewn his garments; and through their work a spiritual journey with Africa is kindled. Fur- thermore, the social labor wrapped in this commodity gives rise to value, such that the social substance contained in the commodity in part corresponds to and is representative of its importance (Marx 1976). Brad explained that it is not only the labor of the individual weaver making the cloth, but also that of diaspora men in general and their broader social struggles, something that he relates to and that he believes bonds African American men together. Emergent thoughts about product producers give way to thoughts about one’s ancestors. Although neither Brad nor any of our informants could directly trace their lineage from Africa, it was not uncommon for them to muse about ancestral linkages when discussing their African attire. Brad sensed that his ancestors were somehow housed within him and released through his clothing consumption. By reflecting on the heritage of the clothing style and his own Afrocentricity, he auth- enticates by creating a “continuous historical thread” (Wade 1999, 457), essentially historicizing. Past and present others and places blend as his cultural clothing “gives substance to [these] incorporeal beings” and “the garments themselves come to have potency” (Perani and Wolff 1999, 41). As might be expected, journeying to Africa is likely to be experienced more prominently when among similarly clothed consumers because consumers believe they are not solely African Ameri- cans who choose to wear African clothing on a particular day, but rather a group of African diasporic peoples who have been removed from their home and now have come together.

I just liked everything they were all wearing. I liked them [the African attire] all. It feels good to be surrounded by all of us [African Americans] with these beautiful clothes. It feels like we’re ﬁnally back together, like we were never separated. Like being in Africa. (Eric)

It’s like being a part of a community, [if a] group of people are wearing it … when you’re in a large community where there’s two or three hundred people wearing it, you also want to be like a part of that, because then it becomes a meaningful thing, I’m also part of the community. Oh, I think it’s wonderful! I think it’s beautiful! Imagine seeing two or three hundred people in African clothing. [It’s] absolutely breathtaking … . Just imagine if that’s what we had been wearing all this time. (Brad) Aware of disruptions in lineage and resulting discontinuities, informants appreciated how face-to- face encounters facilitate face-to-place experiences. Eric and Brad demonstrate this and enjoy the communitas of African attire. Another informant described a similar experience:

I mean you can [even] be in a large group and you might have a dozen, two dozen, maybe even three dozen people that are dressed in African styles, but we got a connection and everybody always speaks in most CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 13

situations, “Hey brother, hey sister, how you doing?” those kind of things … You feel like you got a sister/ brother thing like going on. You feel like you got more relations with those people. (Bernadette) The transition from individual to shared meaning occurs not only because consumers don the same clothing but because this clothing creates a platform on which a shared history can be reconfigured through historicizing. They imagine what it might have been like had African Americans always worn African-style clothing and delight in the renewed comradeship African garments afford. And, although generations removed from direct memory, consumers feel what Walker (2001, 30) describes as “the macrolevel of belonging to recreated African nations in the Americas based on plural citizenships remembered from Africa.” The authenticating practice of journeying to the Motherland is indeed a form of tourism. On the one hand, similar to MacCannell’s(1976/2013) classic theories on tourism, our consumers searched for the authentic. Yet the reasons for their journeys were not offshoots of what MacCannell (1976/ 2013) describes as modernity’s dominating logic of inauthenticity, in which the alienated are brought back to places of authenticity (MacCannell 1976/2013). That is, these consumers do not leave home to go to other places because they perceive their everyday life as contrived and artificial; rather, journeying provides a route back to Africa so that they can comfortably live in present-day America, and their clothing evidences this journey. Through this practice, consumers investigate and historicize, immerse themselves in, and enact a discourse with the African community, in which they comfortably coexist in the cultural backdrop of Africa and America. Therefore, journeying to the Mother- land means belonging to a community that is not anchored to one specific African country; it is partaking in an African world community in which authenticating occurs through a cultural conti- nuum bridging Africa and America.

Educating one’s own Authenticating by educating one’s own describes how consumers produce historical narratives of African-American heritage and then communicate this history to others. African-clothed consumers are concurrently a noun and a verb; they are history, history making, and history being told. Edu- cating one’s own allows consumers to write a history to which they belong and also to write themselves into that history. The (re)creation of historical selves is important for two distinct, but related reasons. First, in the absence of a more definitive genealogy, it allows consumers to investigate their heritage and history. Second, rather than emphasize the exactness of an event, place or time (which they most often cannot), consumers enjoy the processual aspects of authentication, as compared with determining whether their clothing is authentic or not. That African clothing fulfills this educational role for many African-American consumers is perhaps foreseeable, given that West Africa has largely disseminated itself to the African-American community through textiles (Rabine 2002). Strengthening clothing’seffectiveness indicates its communicative ability as an engaging educational resource (McCracken 1989) and the ability of dress performances and fashion to encourage people “to learn to be visually at home with themselves and their culture” (Craik 1993, 10). Alice’s remarks illustrate this practice:

I think of it [me in African style clothing] as a source of information. It’s like somebody asking you for direc- tions … They always ask me, “How come you’re wearing that sometimes to church?” and I ask them, “Why don’t you?” You wear the clothes, clothes don’t wear you, kind of thing, and that’s what I’m trying to foster in my daughter. I’m not raising Rosa Parks, I’m raising Winnie Mandela. See there’sadiﬀerence and they’re looking at me. Rosa was nice and she didn’t get up from her seat, but Winnie ran a country. African clothing witnesses the use of the African-clothed body to express the importance of Afri- can culture and its connection with historical and political discourses of African and African-Amer- ican identity. By invoking politically charged names such as Rosa Parks and Winnie Mandela, consumers not only celebrate and commemorate historical ﬁgures in Black culture but also provoke active participation in history (Dixon 1994), often historicizing in anachronistic ways. In their 14 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN

African clothing, consumers, historical ﬁgures, and events are allowed to move back and forth in time and not necessarily in a linear manner. For many like Alice, yesterday’s events mark today and memories orient her in the present (Dixon 1994). And, like Black memorabilia, African clothing becomes a way for consumers to teach history to others (Motley, Henderson, and Baker 2003), to foster Black pride or, as one informant noted, to redress the concern “that a lot of Black girls don’t have pride in their heritage.” To this end, informants believed that the need for a positive Black history is urgent for Black Americans, because they believe that young African Americans often know little about Black history or that what they do know has been heavily inﬂuenced by contemporary media portrayal of Africa that all too often overlook positive advancement and development on the continent, instead choosing to focus solely on economic, political and other hardships. African clothing can be a means of deconstructing this negative imagery and incorporating aspira- tional representations of Black history. In authenticating by educating one’s own, African-clothed informants attempted to engage others in discourses about Black identity and Black consciousness. Samyrah, an informant in her late thirties, shared that she believes it is important for people to understand that African clothing is not just about the clothing but rather it lets others know that Africa is a part of one’s heritage, something that others cannot take away from them:

Its [African clothing] something that I will always [be] … you know, it’s just like you can’t put on being Black or take it oﬀ.It’s something that you are all the time … You’re going to always be Black. I’m going to always be African here in America, no matter what clothes I wear. Now I can put clothes on that make me feel comfortable in that or I can wear other clothes … I’m not trying to put on any kind of African piece. It’s just natural, because I am an African in America. I am that [said very loudly] … That’s still my experience, just as Africa is still my experience. No matter [how] much I move away from it, it’s still a natural part of who I am. Samyrah was born and raised in Midwest America and has never lived outside the United States or visited Africa, yet refers to herself as an “African here in America.” She did not always see herself this way. She explains that she decided to wear this style dress because she desired a closer connection to her African-American heritage. Samyrah found that as people inquired about her clothing, she too learned about her African heritage and subsequent African ancestral linkages grew. Many informants described a similar consumption experience, in which enacting African-American heritage involved legitimizing African heritage through performances that emphasized exploration and investigation. Arnould and Price (2000) note, such an authentication allows consumers to make life moments of their community explicit. This was important for consumers, like Samyrah, who spoke about the need for “folk” to understand that Africa is a part of their past and present and not something that can or should be removed. By wearing African clothing, she can educate others that Africa is a permanent part of the African-American heritage and something they need to be comfortable wearing. Authenticating as the generational transmission of these values is captured in remarks from Kayla:

Afrika (sic) is the name I’ve given myself because it reﬂects my spiritual side and my heritage. It’s a name that reﬂects my mission, which is to let me [teach] kids [to] know their roots and culture. I want my kids to know who they are and where they come from. This is my mission in life … . African clothing makes a statement to people. It sends a signal to people, and I wear it so that kids can learn when I want them to understand certain things. Consumers don African clothing because they interpret it to be powerful and believe it conveys that the things and the peoples of Africa are also powerful. Authenticating by educating one’s own, then, enables the transmission of both meaning and power. In other words, not only does the clothing from Africa possess certain strengths, but also do its descendants. Kayla’s remarks are consistent with historical uses of clothing by African-American women, for whom embracing Africanness redresses a history of racial exploitation and ostracization (Checker 2004). With this authenticating practice, consumers can accomplish what Checker (2004) describes as abandoning a history of CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 15

American oppression and looking forward to a history of African and African-American self- determination. African clothing oﬀers a critical space within the Black community in which our informants can pay homage to their heritage by educating one another about it. Although formalized institutional educational media exist, such as Black history month, they do not provide a continual means of educating others and discovering one’s place in history. African clothing accomplishes this instead, as Alice indicated:

[African clothing is] the education of other kids … letting them feel comfortable, because the kids need to see you to do that too. They ask me, “How come you got that on today?” and I reply, “Because that’s what Mother Africa wears,” [and they respond] “Oh Africans wear this?” Alice uses perceptual and visual differences in attire as an educational vehicle. In her words, African dress is like “connecting old and new.” The interpretational differences prompted by African clothing serve to bridge times gone by with the new and to provide a common ground between them. They also historicize, conjuring up thoughts of and linkages between elements of African-American and African history. In essence, consumers are a walking history lesson, enlightening others about their cultural heritage while telling themselves their own history. As they have in the past, the majority of Black Americans today view their fate as linked to that of the race (Dawson 2001), and through this authenticating practice, they are able to reaffirm their culture, taking what they perceive as the best of its traditions and passing them on to other consumers.

Discussion Our research sought to understand why and how the descendants of involuntary immigrants authenticate consumption objects. We find that authenticating African dress is a way for consumers to investigate heritage and to redress historical uncertainties. We uncover that consumers engage in three authenticating practices, namely, representing resistance, journeying to the Motherland, and educating one’s own. When African Americans engage in these practices, they seek to better understand and address historical knowledge gaps related to diaspora identity, culture and heritage. Underlying these authentication practices is consumer desire to resolve ideological tensions regarding African-American identity and to investigate important questions pertaining to their heritage such as “What is African and what is African-American?” or, for that matter, “What really makes something African or African-American?” Thus, in their quest for authenticity, our informants are motivated by the historical and ideological forces that have shaped and that continue to characterize today’s society. Most notable are the disruptions and discontinuities that bring about a sense of historical incompleteness and the double consciousness, that is, the two-ness of the diaspora identity. A perspective of authentication that incorporates critical historical and ideological issues is particularly relevant to diaspora consumer populations such as African Americans for which the identity anchoring traditions and normalizing habits (Gergen 1991) are significantly impacted by the forces of colonization and slavery. For African Americans, the certainty associated with a modern society exists in a much different way than it has for other populations, such as voluntary immigrant populations. It is important to note that their place in American society began with uncertainty, spurred by the systematic efforts of slave owners and government laws to erase central elements of African culture (e.g. family structure, language, dress). Although many elements of African culture remain in today’s African-American culture, the systematic erasure was successful to the extent that “family disruption and loss of precise genealogy distance black Americans from more solid, or literal, connections to an African identity” (Dixon 1994, 22). Thus, it is not surprising that informants like Samyrah, who perceives herself as an African in America, or Brad, who rekindles ancestral relations, acknowledged African culture as being embedded in African-American society but different from what they envision African culture to be or “[it] should’ve been.” 16 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN

Importantly, then, historicizing is critical in conditions of contested historical knowledge and hence reflected in consumer authenticating practices. And, in line with Brown, Hirschman, and Maclaran’s(2001, 55) take on this concept, our informants historicize “not to understand history in its own terms, but in today’s terms,” whereby they “dialogue between past and present … fusing the horizons of then-and-there with here-and-now.” Thus, when consumers try to piece together unknown histories, historicizing allows them to bring the past into the present (e.g. images of Winnie Mandela and Rosa Parks in the context of contemporary society) and the present into the past (e.g. situating oneself in an idealized African village of long ago), while also anachronistically reordering events. This enables consumers to make linkages from the past (both real and imagined), to the present, to the future, in non-linear ways that disrupt notions of chronology (Dixon 1994). In this way, historicizing is essential to authentication because it allows consumers to achieve continuity among places, cultures, and identities. It does so by unraveling the layers of African, African-American and Black diaspora relations (Madison 2013), by creating a channel for diasporic pathways of belonging for the “Motherland” (ibid) and by allowing what Holsey (2008) refers to as “back and forth” or mul- tidirectional travel between Africa and the diaspora. Though always problematic and incomplete, history lets consumers reconstruct what is no longer (Nora 1989) and shape the dynamic meanings of production and consumption. The linkages between and the reordering of the past and present is less about the dialogue between abstract and isolated individuals than about the dialogue between society of today and society of yesterday (Carr 1990), with the desire to make sense of the place one currently inhabits. We observe that historicizing also enables consumers to manage the inherent tensions embodied in the African and American identities borne out of double consciousness and to create a quilted understanding of their ethnic identity. Note that our informants did not initially introduce Afri- can-style clothing into their lives because they wanted to be or feel African. Rather, they began wearing this clothing because they desired a greater sense of being African-American. In other words, African clothing serves as an anchor around which they can reify their African-Americanness. How- ever, forging relationships with African-American identity elements through the appropriation of African dress is contradictory. When consumers like Samyrah embrace the African culture (e.g. her self-proclaimed position as an African in America), they may push away other aspects that are an embodied part of African-American culture. That is, because emphasizing one element of a hybrid identity can diminish the other, trying to be more African-American paradoxically renders our informants less African-American, leading them to simultaneously create and experience the authentic and inauthentic (Favor 1999). In other words, lacking the knowledge to fully own an Afri- can identity but also being aware that they cannot fully separate themselves from aspects of their African-American identity, consumers experience the double consciousness that Du Bois conceptualized. Regardless of whether an informant wore African-style clothing episodically, everyday or per- vasively, they expressed a felt awareness of the twoness their dress inspired. They have a sense of “see [ing] himself through the revelation of the other world” (Mullins 2002, 186). For Du Bois, this con- ceptualization yielded an African American subjectivity that reflected both unique African historical experiences and a unique American identity (Mullins 2002). We find consumer authentication of African-style dress witnesses a similar double consciousness, with African Americans having a con- ception of self as an American and a person of African descent. It is perhaps not surprising that consumer authenticating is quite visible in the context of consumer identity (re)construction and performance. In the midst of the evolving identity that diaspora brings (Favor 1999), African-clothed consumers manipulate appearance to creatively fashion identities and representations of themselves. Their interpretive performances often echo those presented by Western media and Western designers, such as Hermès, John Galliano, Kenzo, and Dolce & Gabanna, whose images of African fashion, culture, and people are often acculturated, imagined, and anachronistic representations of the continent (Keller 2013). When historicizing, our informants commodified the past and engaged in a similar creative anachronism (Lowenthal 1985) – that is, changing the past to one’s end. Because consumers may not be astute on historical facts, the CONSUMPTION MARKETS & CULTURE 17 changing that takes place is not the rewriting of known texts but rather the (re)creation of history to better understand one’s own place in time and space (McIntosh and Prentice 1999). Consumers’ use of history to investigate social and political values and to guide present actions seems necessary because their sense of personal identity is rooted in the past. As descendants of involuntary immigrants dating back as early as the sixteenth century when slaves first arrived in Jamestown, African Americans’ understanding of specific family history may be clouded, as opposed to the genealogy of undisplaced populations. This makes the ability to historicize properly – that is, without the mistakes associated with anachronism and decontextualization (Boix-Mansilla 2000), difficult, if not imposs- ible. Consequently, consumers are prone to create a collection of facile myths about their heritage, identity, or culture (Boix-Mansilla 2000), which in turn affords them the ability to establish a collective memory, a critical component in the development of social identity (Tosh 1991). An anachronistic approach to consumer authentication highlights this complex agency and the capacity of individuals to engage within socially and historically bounded spaces (Bangstad 2006) and the critical practices of transculturation that inform interpretations of media images of Africa (Keller 2013). Thus, consumer authentication necessarily involves the simultaneous production of a personalized novel experience and the recreation of collective historical narratives. In sum, our findings offer several contributions to existing literature. First, while our analysis lends support to the idea that the authentic and inauthentic coexist, often with an interplay between them (Benjamin [1935] 1969; Grayson and Martinec 2004; Chalmers and Price 2009), and negotiating paradoxes is an important element of authenticity (Rose and Wood 2005; Chronis and Hampton 2008), we offer several important differences that go beyond our current understanding of authenticity. One of these nuances is that authenticating and the paradoxes that consumers experience associated with it may arise from gaps in consumer historical knowledge with respect to established meanings and the desire to better understand them. Further, such paradoxes are not always between differing “known” texts; that is, consumers may not be reconciling tensions between what they know (albeit subjectively) to be either real or fiction. Although our consumers did imagine and create fan- tasies that were inconsistent with historical facts, they did not realize that the meanings they assigned were inaccurate. Therefore, unlike Cohen’s(1979) tourists, reality television viewers, and consumers accounted for in previous authentication research where informants could usually distinguish between “people like me:”“storybook characters,” and the “real from the fake” (Beverland and Far- relly’s 2010), our informants were often less able to distinguish the real from the unreal parts of their culture. More importantly, because our informants were not dealing with known texts, our work highlights how authentication is not always concerned with affirming what is authentic and what is inauthentic. Rather, the emphasis is on investigating such that exploring and piecing together unknown histories in pursuit of a cultural identity and collective memory motivate authentication. As such, we contribute to the literature by responding to Beverland and Farrelly’s(2010) call for shifting research focus from the authentic/inauthentic dichotomy to how consumers reconcile interpretations. Second, our research highlights the important roles of double consciousness and historicizing in authentication. Borne out of the two-ness of diaspora experience, consumers desire to understand their heritage. This desire compels them to quilt an ethnic identity through historicizing, creatively moving back and forth from both real and imagined accounts of the past, present, and future. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to uncover the role of historicizing on consumer authentication. Third, we contribute to the literature by underscoring the importance of historical and ideological forces on consumers’ motivation for authenticating consumption objects.

Concluding remarks Our research findings show that culture, politics, history, and authentication are intertwined, such that one cannot be understood without the others. Consumer experiences with African clothing reveal that some 400 years after their ancestor’s forced separation from their homeland, members 18 B. DEBERRY-SPENCE AND E. IZBERK-BILGIN of the African diaspora continue to interrogate what African-American means and that this remains a contemporary issue. Our research, then, calls attention to the experiences of involuntary immigrant populations and their diaspora, a critically large and continuously increasing consumer base that has yet to receive attention in marketing literature. We also contribute to the discourse on consumer authenticity by calling attention to the role and importance of history; authentication goals reflect consumers’ desires for truth and genuineness but, equally important, their desires to explore and investigate – in the case of our study, a desire to investigate one’s heritage, reconstruct a group identity, restore a sense of historical continuity, and contest stigmatizing representations. We believe this is not unique to African Americans, but may also resonate with the experiences of other involuntary immigrant consumers whose national, ethnic, and personal cultural orientations have been abruptly replaced with new and alien modes of existence. Holocaust Jews, Native Amer- icans, Palestinians, Kurds, natural disaster survivors, refugees (e.g. those from Syria, Darfur, and Bos- nia), and communities subject to development-induced displacement are among just a few of the populations that have been, and continue to be, forced to leave their countries and settle elsewhere. Other examples where consumers have experienced sudden and forced identity shifts or re-orientations include the ex-socialist European countries in the aftermath of World War II as well as the Japanese, Iranian, and Turkish societies, following the state-imposed Westernization projects, which rapidly and significantly altered the cultural frameworks of consumers in these nations. Alter- natively, cultural authentication in the manner we have described may present among descendants of immigrants whose references to the home culture gradually fade as they integrate deeper into the host culture. Thus, future consumer authentication research with these population categories should explore these issues. Finally, research examining consumer authentication with a different cultural consumption object may also advance theories. Because African clothing is highly personal and at the same time, public, we were able to openly examine the intimacies of consumer authentication. Yet an individual’s relationship with body and dress often carries a unique set of circumstances and experiences that likely differ from that maintained with items of a material culture, that might be perceived as less intimate. Thus, future empirical examinations might involve a different product and/or product category.

Disclosure statement No potential conﬂict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors Benét DeBerry-Spence is a Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her research interests encompass retailing, marketing, entrepreneurship and development; and, her scholarship appears in leading journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, and the Journal of Retailing. Dr DeBerry-Spence is the founder of The MASAZI Visitor and Welcome Centre, an engaged research initiative in Ghana, West Africa that works with microbusinesses and that has hosted NY Times and BBC World Live. Elif Izberk-Bilgin is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Her research focuses on consumer activism, religious ideology in the marketplace, Islamic marketing, and sociological aspects of consumerism in emerging countries. Her work has been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Academy of Mar- keting Science, and Consumption, Markets and Culture. She is the recipient of the 2015 Journal of Consumer Research Best Paper Award and the 2012 Sidney J. Levy Award.

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Appendix. Informant details

Informant Age Education Profession African clothing user type Alice Early ﬁfties Undergraduate Teacher, nurse instructor Everyday Bernadette Early forties High School Administrative assistant Pervasive Brad Mid-forties High School Cleaning business owner, student Episodic Eric Early twenties Undergraduate Student Episodic Jerome Mid-twenties Undergraduate Student, musician Everyday Kayla Mid-twenties Undergraduate Poet, writer, teacher Episodic Samyrah Late thirties Postgraduate Art gallery/Creative center owner Pervasive Shirley Early sixties High School Clothing store owner Pervasive