Miguel Angel Gardetti
UCRF is running a ‘Member of the Month’ feature on this blog, where a member, selected at random from the membership database, is sent five questions to give us all an overview of our members. Our tenth participant is Miguel Angel Gardetti.
– How would you sum up your research / practice?
Given the civilizational crisis produced by the Western system -with an anthropocentric, reductionist, modernist, colonial, capitalist and materialist logic of growth-, I have integrated into my study and research the vision of important Latin American intellectuals, thinkers and academics. For example, Arturo Escobar (Colombia), Alberto Acosta (Ecuador), Eduardo Gudynas (Uruguay), Maristella Svampa (Argentina), Enrique Dussel (Argentina), Boaventura de Sousa Santos (Brazil), Ramón Grosfoguel (Puerto Rico), among others. All of them are studied in careers related to anthropology and sociology, but not in careers related to design and fashion, which is a mistake. We are not including voices that can bring us clarity and ideas -biocentric- on the road to sustainability.
– How do you address fashion and sustainability in your work?
Many thinkers mentioned above ignore the importance of indigenous cosmovisions and the “rights of nature” – the latter having constitutional status in some Latin American countries such as Bolivia and Ecuador. At the Sustainable Textile Center, we are developing a project that incorporates and integrates these unheard indigenous voices. This goes further and deeper than simply engaging with stakeholders.
– What are the conflicts you have encountered around fashion and sustainability in your work?
The central conflict in the current integration of fashion and sustainability is that this integration is driven by economic, capitalist and consumerist ideas. This is not the way.
– What do you consider the key sources and cases when it comes to fashion and sustainability?
Some of the resources that the “decolonizing Fashion” groups at UCRF have been very interesting to me. For example:
Bedford, C. (2020) ‘Decolonizing a Fashion School: A Critical Reflection on Fashion Education in Australia through an Indigenous Perspective’, Fashion Theory, 24:6, 947-949.
I think UCRF should promote this group with broader and deeper objectives.
– Could you recommend some less known sources or cases you think should be more widely shared?
Although they are in Spanish, the following two sources seem important to me:
Gudynas E (2014). Derechos de la Naturaleza – Etica Biocéntrica y Políticas Ambientales.
Acosta A. (2013) El Buen Vivir. Sumak Kawsay: Una oportunidad para imaginar otros mundos.
Thank you very much for your insights Miguel!