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Refashioning the local: Black masculinity,
class and clothing
Kharnita Mohamed
Published online: 21 Dec 2011.
To cite this article: Kharnita Mohamed (2011): Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing,
Agenda: Empowering women for gender equity, 25:4, 104-111
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focus
Refashioning the local: Black masculinity,
class and clothing
Kharnita Mohamed
Downloaded by [University of Johannesburg] at 06:48 01 July 2013
abstract
During September 2005, I conducted a visual ethnography with black male undergraduate students at the
University of the Western Cape (UWC) in Cape Town, South Africa with a focus on masculinity and clothing as
signifiers of identity. UWC is a historically disadvantaged institution and most of the participants were from lowincome to lower-middle class homes. Despite their socioeconomic status the students sought to produce
powerful self-images through expensive, designer clothing and seemed determined to display ‘unique style’.
Their clothing, and the discourses they valued and perpetuated around clothing (such as masculine
individualism) were derived from a model of masculinity found in the magazines they read. The upper-class
masculinity in Gentleman’s Quarterly provided an imaginary of masculinity which participants deployed to
resignify their class aspirations. As apartheid conflated race and class, UWC students as emerging professionals
whose upward mobility was refigured by post-apartheid possibilities, were transforming their masculinities to
differentiate themselves from black lower-class masculinities. I will argue, that their recourse to Gentleman’s
Quarterly and the clothing expressing their new masculine ethos became vehicles to signal upward social
mobility and so provided participants with a means to disarticulate apartheid’s conflations of racialised class.1
keywords
Black masculinity, clothing, individuality, men’s lifestyle magazines, socioeconomic conditions
Being a consumer is to be in an active
relationship with the social systems that
give our possessions value (Baudrillard,
2005). Clothing consumption and style is
sociopolitical since fashion facilitates ways
of mediating plural subject positions (Murray, 2002). Social inequality, poverty and
the racialisation of class thus affect clothing
consumption in South Africa.2 Though ownership of expensive luxury goods is associated with conspicuous consumption
among the wealthy (Veblen, 1899/2003);
within deprived neighbourhoods owning
costly branded clothes signals access to
resources (see Charles et al., 2009).
Apartheid South Africa conflated race
and class, with white capitalist structural
violence curtailing economic possibilities
and upward social mobility amongst blacks
(Johnstone, 1976). Structural oppression
also limited material demonstrations of
social status for blacks. For some young
black3 men in the townships, the apartheidcreated economy of deprivation resulted in
the fetishisation of certain brands of
clothes, and the intense need for a desired
clothing article signified the inarticulable
distresses caused by structural violence
(Ratele, in press). For the young, black
men from the University of the Western
Agenda 90/25.4 2011
ISSN 1013-0950 print/ISSN 2158-978X online
# 2011 K. Mohamed
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10130950.2011.630578
pp. 104111
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sought in a model of masculinity found in
the magazines they read and strategically
deployed to resignify their class aspirations.
After a brief note on the method, I explore
the importance of the elite positioned magazine, Gentleman’s Quarterly (GQ) (see
Ricciardelli et al., 2010) to the participants.
Though the male UWC students drew
upon a model of upper-class masculinity
found in a magazine, they did so in negotiation with the masculinities of the black
townships. Black men in apartheid South
Africa occupied subordinate and marginal
masculinities relative to white men and
apartheid segregation produced local hegemonic masculinities. However, masculinity
is relational, fluid, multiple and influenced
by power and class relations (Connell, 2005)
and thus hegemonic masculinities overlap,
are contested and contradict each other
(Morrell, 2001). Hegemonic masculinity, primarily concerned with the subordination of
women and other men, refers to the ‘‘culturally idealised’’ (Connell, 1990:83) forms of
being ‘‘a real man’’ (Morrell, 2001:3). Sports
heroes, male models (Connell, 1990) and on
the Cape Flats in Cape Town, violent black
males that are able to exert control over
land and bodies (Moolman, 2004) perform
hegemonic masculinity. The participants in
the study were contesting and refusing the
identification with lower-class4 black masculinities in a post-apartheid South Africa in
which upward mobility was possible.
Methodology
As students and emerging professionals, the young men in this study, subject to structural violence on the Cape Flats,
were reforming their aspirations and seeking to differentiate themselves from the
perceived violent, low-class masculinities
in the townships. In order to do this, they
utilised the performative possibilities of
clothing, speech and other markers, all of
which served to identify them in ways
which the broader society recognises as
middle-class masculinity. The UWC students negotiated their identities against
local black working-class masculinities to
dissociate themselves from the dominant
local ways of representing themselves as
men with status. Their clothing, the discourses and images they valued and perpetuated, like that of ‘unique style’, were
focus
Cape (UWC) who participated in this study,
clothing consumption was integral to the
accrual of symbolic capital, the remaking of
their social identities and the transformation of their masculinities. To re-imagine
and refashion their class identities and thus
disarticulate race and class in post-apartheid South Africa, the young black men in
this study drew upon hegemonic fantasies
found in magazines.
UWC is a historically disadvantaged institution and the student demographic is predominantly black. Due to apartheid South
Africa’s racialisation of class, most of the
students were from lower-income and
lower-middle class income homes. During
September 2005, I conducted a visual ethnography with black undergraduate male
students at UWC with a focus on masculinity and clothing as visual signifiers of
identity. Visual ethnography is a qualitative
research approach and participant observation, open-ended, semi-structured interviews and photography (see Pink, 2005:43)
were used to explore the meaning of clothing in participants’ lives. Groups and individual male students, between 20 and 25
years of age were approached and interviewed during September 2005. Informed
consent was negotiated with the 17 participants and as permission was obtained to
take photographs for future publication,
anonymity could not be guaranteed.5 Students were assured of confidentiality, however, as individual details from the
interviews would be obscured.
The participants in the study were contesting
and refusing the identification with lower-class4
black masculinities in a post-apartheid South
Africa in which upward mobility was possible.
Though students were approached
based on their appearance, my selection
criteria was ordinariness, rather than the
exotic or exceptional. Most of the students
were clothed in branded denim jeans, tracksuit pants, t-shirts, jackets and shoes. The
participants’ dress sense was influenced by
the media representations they were exposed to, as I will show below, and reconfigured their gendered performances and
self-representation to inhabit their new
imaginary of masculinity.
Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing
105
focus
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Mediating masculinities
Men have increasingly become subject to
the pressures of the media to be both
individual and fashionable (Nixon, 1996).
Though magazines were not followed slavishly (see Jackson et al., 2001), they were
extremely influential for the UWC students.
The magazines mentioned by participants
were GQ, Blink and Men’s Health. GQ was
referenced as their primary source of fashion information and only one participant
had never read the magazine. GQ is an
international lifestyle magazine which emphasises status and wealth and targets
more affluent men (see Ricciardelli et al.,
2010), showcasing ‘‘de luxe masculine consumption’’ and a conservative metropolitanism (Nixon, 1996:164).
in overriding and consciously reformulating
the embodied habits of the township, the
participants’ mimicking acts were an attempt
to move away from their habitual class
dispositions
According to Viljoen (2008:325328), the
South African GQ is a ‘‘how to guide on
personal branding’’ for the upwardly mobile
man and is aimed at promoting readers’
social goals through providing the information they need to fulfil their aspirations.
Participants used GQ to educate them on
what was ‘in’ for the season. What colours
were fashionable was offered as an example. As Michael,6 a participant said ‘‘you
have to know what the colours are every
season and add it to your wardrobe’’ (Michael interview, 14 September, 2005). Utilising GQ, participants were thus stylising
their masculinity through continually transforming their wardrobes thus demonstrating a fashionable consciousness and an
apparent continuous access to expensive
resources (Veblen, 1899/2003). GQ thus
legitimated engaging in conspicuous (Veblen, 1899/2003) and visible consumption
which signals social status, and for the
participants this held true particularly
among poorer socioeconomic groups
(Charles et al., 2009). This individualist
discourse in men’s magazines, exhorting
self-enhancement (Nixon, 1996) provided
social distance between the upper-class
masculinity they desired to inhabit and the
township habits of embodiment.7
106
AGENDA 90/25.4 2011
GQ did not only help participants identify trends but also provided the imaginative
material to embody new performances of
masculinity (Butler, 1993). Poses were emulated from GQ and these were recognised
by their peers. A respondent stated that if
one of their friends lounged in a particular
way and asked for affirmation from his
group, they would validate the elegance of
pose by saying ‘‘GQ’’. Participants were
thus in an active process of reforming
gendered performances to embody (Butler,
1993) GQs display of upper-class masculinity. The use of the body is both social and
individual (Bourdieu, 2006) and clothing
mediates a sense of embodiment (Weber
and Mitchell, 2004). To navigate the violence in the townships, men carry themselves and walk in specific ways which is
meant to signify toughness, a carefree
attitude and fearlessness. Having a rol in
the Coloured townships, that is walking like
a tough guy, is associated with gangsterism
and therefore also performs a working-class
position. In overriding and consciously reformulating the embodied habits of the
township, the participants’ mimicking acts
were an attempt to move away from their
habitual class dispositions (Bourdieu, 2006)
and reflected their desire for upward class
mobility.
The strict gendered division of colour
choice, that is pink for women and blue for
men, was no longer relevant as a result of
mediated fashion trends. A participant stated
‘‘Pink is very hot for guys right now’’ (Group
interview, 19 September, 2005). When asked
whether this was not an inappropriate colour
for guys to be wearing, two participants
laughed at me and asserted it was fashionable. However, all the pink garments participants said they owned were expensive
designer clothes. According to Robert Johnson, a GQ editor, wearing pink has an ‘‘Ivy
League, slightly public school [connotation],
you think of posh boys, sweaters round their
shoulders’’ (Rohrer Finlo, ‘Men in Pink’, BBC
News Magazine, December 10, 2009). Wearing pink then does not signify femininity,
rather it represents ideas of luxury and
leisure, ideas which outweigh a transgression of gendered symbolic codes and asserts
upper-class masculinity. Commodity circuits
are contradictory and contested and
thus goods can be consumed unambiguously in accordance with representations of
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If we are not unique, then what are
we?
Expressing ‘unique style’ was seen as the
ideal mode of self-representation for
the participants. As a signifier of subjectivity, clothing enables self-representation
(Thompson & Haytko, 1997; Murray, 2002)
and individual differentiation as well as
inclusion in a social identity (WoodruffeBurton, 1998; Grunow, 1993; Simmel, 1957).
Clothing is thus both personal and social as
it mediates between the individual and
society (Turner, 2007). Being fashionable
and unique enforces satisfaction with an
individuality produced through minute variation as straying too far from socially
accepted clothing codes will contravene
social inclusion (Simmel, 1957). To be recognisably fashionable, the clothes participants bought were massproduced and
required constant access to financial resources. Thus producing masculine individualism forced an anxiety-provoking cycle
of reinvention.
On being asked how wearing the same
brand names as their peers allowed them to
be individual, the participants’ response
was that it was about ‘‘style’’ and ‘‘not
everybody looks cool in them’’ (Participant
interviews, September, 2005). Despite being
able to claim an individual mode of assembling a look as per men’s magazines prescriptions (see Nixon, 1996), the fear of
losing the distinction of difference was of
concern for all participants. One participant
stated:
‘‘. . . if you turn up wearing something
and somebody else wears the same thing
it’s like you are twins . . . you’re not
different anymore . . . like you’re not an
individual’’ (John interview, 12 September, 2005).
focus
hegemonic masculinity, used in opposition
to a discourse and also reinterpreted (Sassatelli, 2007). Through inverting and reinterpreting gendered symbols participants were
able to catapult themselves into a mediated
existence by complying with GQ’s upperclass representations of masculinity (Nixon,
1996). What was important to the participants was the cost of the clothing within GQ’s
‘‘vocabulary of style’’ (Nixon, 1996:164).
They wanted to communicate masculine
individuality and concern for the details of
appearance and thus most of the participants
subscribed to the discourse of ‘unique style’.
If clothing is an external expression of
subjectivity (Woodruffe-Burton, 1998; Simmel, 1957), then meeting someone who is
dressed like a twin, is to be shown to mirror
the subjectivity of an other (Lacan, 2001)
and thus to lose claims to masculine individualism. For this participant the assemblage of a look was not what brought
satisfaction as the presence of the clothing
article on his ‘twin’ led to the loss of his
sense of uniqueness. Clothes were expensive items of prestige within black townships, thus, it seemed that the status they
had gained through ownership was revoked.
as a signifier of subjectivity, clothing enables
self-representation and individual
differentiation as well as inclusion in a
social identity
GQ encouraged perpetual consumption
and demonstrations of individuality from its
readers (see Nixon, 1996) which provoked
anxiety for the participants in the study.
Failure to demonstrate uniqueness made
some of the participants angry because they
were ‘not unique anymore’ and others
refused to wear the article of clothing again.
For the participants, seeing their ‘unique
style’ expressed by someone else was
humiliating and threatened their sense of
individuality. The mass-nature of consumption, the desire to be unique and the costs of
reinvention through commodities engendered by men’s lifestyle magazines (Viljoen,
2008) produced a constant cycle of fear and
humiliation for black men who could not
afford the pleasures of ‘unique style’. If
being unique was necessary in the version
of manhood they were subscribing to, then
most of them, by virtue of limited disposable income, were constantly at risk of being
found wanting. An inability to maintain the
appearance of wealth, through constant
displays of ‘unique style’ would therefore
be tantamount to a loss of a GQ-type upperclass masculinity and the reversion to subordinate masculine status.
Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing
107
focus
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The cost of unique style
Outfitting themselves according to the precepts of their class aspirations required
participants to be resourceful. Many said
they spent most of their disposable income
on clothing. Brand-labels are invariably expensive and thus desirable as they signify
status because of access to capital (Woodruffe-Burton, 1998). As clothing acts as a
marker of status and class differentiation,
the high prices of the brand labels were one
way of ensuring that the possibilities for
destabilising their ‘unique’ ‘style’ was limited (Simmel, 1957). Though some of the
participants could rely on their parents to
finance their clothing, most of the students,
however, had to be resourceful to purchase
expensive clothes.
Participants’ resourceful patterns of
consumption demonstrated the disjuncture
between the upper-class masculinity they
were aspiring to and their socioeconomic
conditions.
Some participants in the study would
buy clothes on credit, their own accounts,
their parents’, a relative’s or friend’s and
said that they spent most of their disposable
income servicing their debt. One participant
bought and sold electronic goods to buy
clothes for himself and his younger brother
as his parents would not buy the kinds of
clothes necessary for them to fit in with
their peers. Another respondent sold his
clothes to buy new clothes or bartered his
clothes for other desired items which made
it appear as if his wardrobe was extensive.
Some participants shopped at sales or
brand-label factory stores to get clothes at
‘bargain prices’ but lost the cachet of having
obtained an item as soon as it had hit the
stores. Young Designers Emporium (YDE)
was favoured as the prestige of designer
clothing was retained and yet was less
expensive than some chain-stores. Those
who considered themselves serious fashionistas would not shop at stores that offered
credit as it placed the clothing within the
reach of a much larger market and they
would thus have to sacrifice individuality if
they shopped there. The politics of consumption is inflected by relations of power, class,
ethnicity and gender (Sassatelli, 2007). Participants’ resourceful patterns of consumption
108
AGENDA 90/25.4 2011
demonstrated the disjuncture between the
upper-class masculinity they were aspiring
to and their socioeconomic conditions.
Further the rituals of possession
(McCracken, 1988) that participants performed are also noteworthy. These rituals
ensuring the maintenance of their clothes
illustrate the intensive work and anxiety that
remaining fashionable required. Most participants cared for their clothes themselves
and engaged in elaborate acts of care to
ensure that their clothes maintained their
colour and fit, as revealed in the following:
‘‘I wash my jeans after I wore it four or
five times, I’ll put it on and sit in the bath
with them on and wash them . . . otherwise they shrink and then I will hang it up
out of the sun so that they don’t fade‘‘
(Robert interview, 14 September, 2005).
Though they were willing to pay exorbitant
prices, and wanted to display ‘unique style’,
participants could not afford to accumulate
many clothes. Thus, for some participants,
the clothing they owned had to be carefully
protected, nurtured and made to appear
almost new. Despite, the constant imperative to consume, it was through the possession of a few status items that they
produced themselves in new terms.
Viljoen (2008) states that the masculine
ideal represented in South African lifestyle
magazines, despite having gained a multiracial readership, is white middle-class
male. Black men from the townships who
have not yet achieved middle-class socioeconomic status and are striving to emulate
the upper and middle-class masculinities
depicted in magazines are therefore disadvantaged by the politics of consumption.
Despite the depoliticisation of class discourse in South African men’s lifestyle
magazines (Viljoen, 2008), making an individualist self through commodities (Nixon,
1996) was a fraught and financially arduous
process for the black men in this study as
they (and their families) did not have the
same economic resources as their white
counterparts. Remaking raced class subjectivity through pecuniary emulation (Veblen,
1899/2003) therefore entails, for black masculinities, stresses and anxieties that exposes the socioeconomic ethos of
masculine
individualist
consumption.
However to resituate themselves within
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Evaluating the local
One of the most popular stores mentioned
was YDE. This is a South African store. In
2005 it showcased emerging South African
designers and was more exclusive than
most of the chain stores.8 Even though
branded clothing signifies the global, being
fashionable is often profoundly local (Kjeldegaard & Askegaard, 2006) and global
brands did not necessarily provide status
as participants’ pride in their YDE garments
showed. It was enough to be able to afford
the kinds of garments that were scarce,
expensive and displayed the GQ look of
luxury. According to a participant, he and
his friends:
‘‘. . .only shop at YDE and they always say
I can see you (are) Southern Suburbs
guys and they (are) shocked when they
hear we live in Northpine. The people
there don’t know how to dress. . . yes you
can see if someone comes from the
Southern Suburbs’’ (Muneer interview,
20 September, 2005).
The Southern suburbs has a reputation for
being more cosmopolitan than the Northern
suburbs in Cape Town and, for the participants prestige was attached to being misrecognised as someone from the Southern
suburbs. The deliberate misrecognition participants courted with YDE clothing allowed
them to differentiate themselves from
others in their neighbourhood. A valuable
article of clothing was less likely to lose its
symbolic capital of status, prestige and
uniqueness if style was geographically displaced and thus participants avoided fears
of humiliation and the anxieties of resourcescarce consumption.
Participants’ style did not only locate or
relocate them geographically, clothing
positioned others too. Clothing was an
indicator of class and allowed judgements
to be made (Bourdieu, 1984) about other
young men. As a participant’s response
indicates:
‘‘. . . you can see if someone comes from
Lavender Hill or a place like that, they’ll
wear those Nike Shocks and you’ll sommer (just) know that they are gampies
(low-class Coloureds). . . you can just see
them the way they are dressed. . . you
don’t want to associate with them. . . they
don’t know how to behave themselves. . .’’ (Ricardo interview, 20 September, 2005).
Lavender Hill is situated on the Cape Flats
and is characterised by endemic poverty,
gangsterism and violence. The male students therefore selected who they would
befriend based on clothing and brand labels. Nike is an international brand and
rather than increasing prestige with its
association with the global (Kjeldegaard &
Askegaard, 2006), the shoes lowered their
wearer’s status for the upwardly mobile
UWC students. The values attached to certain brand labels acted as a way of refusing
to inhabit and associate with subordinate or
even dangerous masculinities. Participants’
system of reference was therefore inflected
by local conditions and clothes played a role
in demarcating social boundaries.
In conclusion
It is because of the economy of scarcity and
deprivation in certain neighbourhoods that
expensive brand labels become synonymous with style (Charles et al., 2009).
Emulating GQs hegemonic form of masculinity allowed participants to veil their subordinate economic status and separate
themselves from the local masculinities
who did not ‘‘know how to behave’’ in the
townships. Wearing GQ-stylised expensive
branded clothes allowed the participants to
imagine transcending their social conditions and express their aspirations of upward mobility. The participants were thus
engaged in consumption patterns that were
shaped by local socioeconomics (Sassatelli,
2007) and were using GQ’s upwardly mobile
aspirational model (Viljoen, 2008) to refashion their class position. Although the
masculine individualism their new imaginary of masculinity enforced was arduous, it
allowed participants to disarticulate their
Refashioning the local: Black masculinity, class and clothing
109
focus
post-apartheid South Africa and renegotiate
their masculinities, the hegemony of a
depoliticised but upwardly mobile masculinity held imaginated potentials that expressed in clothing choices allowed them
to refuse local masculinities.
focus
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race/class position. GQ legitimated a new
display of masculinity that centred on selffashioning, individual consumption and displays of wealth (Nixon, 1996). The cycles of
reinvention motivated by mass-consumption, though anxiety provoking, was productive in showing off an upwardly mobile
masculine subjectivity that belonged to the
more luxurious lifestyle they aspired to. The
need for mediated upper-class models is
indicative of the transforming reconfigurations of post-apartheid South Africa which
are changing the aspirations and desires of
black men, along with the possibilities
some of them are able to imagine inhabiting.
5.
Notes
1.
2.
3.
4.
110
Acknowledgements: I would like to thank Kopano
Ratele for his helpful comments.
Most research on Africans and clothing tends to
exoticise Africanness and reproduces difference
through a relativist focus which ignores the
impositions of white capitalist racism and its
effects. Fashion is what the West does (see
Allman, 2004). Sartorial elegance in a search for
modernity is what Africans do who are amongst
other things, dream-like (eg Gondola, 1999) or
essentially collectivist (eg Friedman, 1994) in
contradiction to Western moderns who are supposedly rational actors despite the research that
shows the similarities (eg Kjeldegaard & Askegaard, 2006; Murray, 2002; Woodruffe-Burton,
1998; Thompson & Haytko, 1997. I have chosen
to disregard Africanness due to its limitations as
a category through which to consider the meanings around clothing. Most research on fashion
in Africa assumes Westernisation as a desired
end, a search for modernity or cosmopolitanism
or emulation of a Western other (see Allman,
2004) even when they are addressing political
economy (eg Friedman, 1994). This Focus will
proceed with urban South Africans as contemporaneous, cosmopolitan, modern subjects who
are part of a global economy of cultural flows
which they take up and discard according to
individual and local needs (Appadurai, 1996).
Drawn from the Black Consciousness Movement,
Black is used strategically to collectively signify
the racialised groups that were oppressed during
apartheid. It is noted that though apartheid racial
classifications are used, it should not indicate
that I endorse these categories. However race still
and most certainly at the time of the study, has
socioeconomic and psychological consequences.
Further, it is noted that strategic essentialist use
of Black as a racial signifier intentionally collapses the difference of apartheid experiences
and effects.
Participants negotiated their identities against
racialised stereotypes that connoted low-class.
AGENDA 90/25.4 2011
6.
7.
8.
Coloured participants for instance averred their
refusal to be identified as gam. Gam as Adhikari
(1992:95) informs us is ‘‘a pejorative label for the
Coloured labouring poor’’ and indicates a ‘‘loud,
uncouth working-class Coloured person’’ with a
propensity for ‘‘criminality, gangsterism, drug
and alcohol abuse, and vulgar behaviour’’ (Adhikari, 2006:482). These internalised racial stereotypes against which the participants re-imagined
themselves were re-coded as class positions with
gam being used to indicate an undesirable lowclass position and identity. The use of class will
thus be used with this renegotiation in mind and
thus low-class and upper-class will be used as
this more closely shows the distinctions in social
identities that participants were making. This
should not indicate that the author subscribes
to these identifiers.
Pink (2005) discusses the complexity of the
ethical issues when photographs or video footage of participants are used for research purposes. She states it is usually impossible to
guarantee anonymity if one has received permission to take photographs of participants.
As participants were ensured confidentiality,
pseudonyms have been used to protect their
identities.
Habits of embodiment, that is the habitual ways
in which we use our bodies and which Bourdieu
(2006) called habitus are socio-cultural and therefore located in class.
YDE is now part of the Truworths chain-stores.
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