Politics of Past Patents: Researching Citizenship via Clothing Inventions 1820–2020

• In Event: Ghosts of Modern Futures Past – III

Abstract

Clothing is a critical socio-technology of everyday life; both mundane and familiar and invested with social and political significance. The political subject is (almost) always dressed (and even when they are not, this too is a potent act). Yet, clothing is remarkably underexplored in STS and in relation to changing understandings of citizenship. Drawing on archival materials, patents and feminist technoscience, I discuss clothing as a critical means through which different bodies are physically and ideologically shaped by and shape social worlds. In my new ERC funded research, I argue that clothing inventors might be viewed as citizen-makers and that clothing patents are a rich untapped source of data that render visible alternative citizenship possibilities, which in turn provoke new questions about things we take for granted, and promise new and potentially revealing insights into society-in-the-making. In doing so, this paper investigates how patents might reveal ‘sociotechnical imaginings’ of alternative worlds (Jasanoff & Kim 2015). This research continues my creative practice research into the histories and politics of wearable technologies via 200 years of patented inventions (1820-2020) exploring past innovation, absent conflicts and forgotten attempts by inventors to radically re-imagine citizenship by seeking to change the way bodies have been clothed.

Author

• Kat Jungnickel, Goldsmiths, University of London