Prato CIRN Community Informatics Conference 2012-PhD Paper
Fashion Shows as Community Archives:
Generating Peace and Security From the Ground Up
Ellen-Rae Cachola
University of California Los Angeles
Abstract: This paper discusses an aspect of my dissertation about the archival practices of the International
Women's Network Against Militarism (IWNAM), a network of women from organizations in South Korea,
Okinawa, Philippines, Guam, Australia, Marshall Islands, Hawai'i, West Coast U.S., Puerto Rico and Vieques. I will
discuss how fashion shows serve as an archival memory system for U.S. and Hawai'i based partners of the IWNAM.
First, I will discuss the IWNAM's long-term vision of genuine security. Second, I will trace the history of the
fashion shows that have contributed to articulating, preserving and passing on the philosophy of genuine security in
U.S. and Hawai'i based contexts. Third, I will trace the types of records that can be found in and through the
productions of the fashion shows. Fourth, I will analyze how the content of particular records articulates how
militarism is contextualized and resisted in U.S. and Hawaii based contexts. Lastly, I will explain how fashion
shows are “complex adaptive archival systems” because their production processes bring together different stories of
people who live in and resist their militarized contexts. Fashion shows also facilitate group learning, development
and co-evolution of strategy-building for communities that organize locally and internationally for genuine peace
and security. A significant contribution of this research is that it describes an alternative organizational model for
community archiving that is dynamic and mobile, and facilitates continuity and emergence of community
knowledge.
Keywords: Community archives; Community knowledge development; Complex adaptive systems; Feminism,
Genuine peace and security; Militarism, Women’s groups.
Fashion Shows as Community Archives:
Generating Peace and Security From the Ground Up
Introduction
As with any large organization, records creation, preservation, management and access
are integral to the pursuit of long and short term goals by community groups. Although they
may not have the resources or the desire to create and maintain formal institutional archives
similar to academic archives, government archives or other established heritage institutions,
communities find ways to use their records to get their message across to wider publics.
Archivists working with activist communities should understand the issues that they are
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grappling with, and identify the records creation systems and structures through which
communities research, produce and disseminate their knowledge to solve problems, among other
tasks.1
My research examines the archival practices of the International Women's Network
Against Militarism (IWNAM), a network2 of women from organizations in S. Korea, Okinawa,
Philippines, Guam, Australia, Marshall Islands, Hawai'i, West Coast U.S., Puerto Rico and
Vieques.3 I draw from the records that have been created and exchanged through this network of
women. I apply the Records Continuum Model (McKemmish et al 2005) to explain how events
experienced by participants of IWNAM inspire their records creation, archiving, and collective
understanding at local and international levels. This paper will report on one aspect of this
research, which is about how fashion shows serve as an archival memory system for U.S. and
Hawai'i based partners of the IWNAM. First, I will discuss the IWNAM's long-term visions.
Second, I will trace the administrative information of the fashion shows to understand the
genealogies of organizations that have contributed to articulating, preserving and passing on the
history of the IWNAM from U.S. and Hawaii based contexts. Third, I will trace the types of
records that can be found in and through the productions of the fashion shows. Fourth, I will
analyze the content of particular records, to articulate how militarism is contextualized and
resisted in U.S. and Hawaii based contexts. Lastly, I will explain how these fashion shows serve
as a “complex adaptive archival system,” because its production process brings together different
stories of people who live in and resist their militarized contexts, and facilitates group learning,
development and co-evolution of strategy building for genuine peace and security.
The Long Term Vision
1
Linda Tuhiwai Smith has described how academic research was met with resistance and skepticism by indigenous
communities because it was correlated to colonial institution's encroachment into their lives, and use of indigenous
peoples as specimens. Therefore, Smith describes decolonial research methods that can be undertaken by or in
partnership with indigenous communities, so that findings can benefit the community's development, not that of an
individual researcher or the university. This notion of research is not a hierarchical process of a researcher treating
the subject as a fixed essentialized subject that cannot speak for itself. Rather, this type of research recognizes that
everyone in the research process are knowledge holders, engaging in a research inquiry that they are collectively
interested in, and working toward answering those questions (Smith 2002). This type of research is also known as
action oriented research in that the researcher is within a group working to solve a problem (Williamson 2002).
2
The IWNAM is not a membership organization, but a network of women active in their own communities, who
have built relationships over time to share information and strategize against the negative impacts of militarism at
international levels (Women for Genuine Security 2007).
3
These countries are listed from the West Pacific to the Caribbean to portray the reach of this network. But this
network did not grow in that order. Delegates from S. Korea, Okinawa, Philippines and the U.S. began to meet in
1997; delegates from Puerto Rico and Vieques joined the network in 2000; delegates from Hawai'i joined the
network in 2004; delegates from Guam joined the network in 2007; delegates from Australia and Marshall islands
joined the network in 2009. Participation in the network varies, where women from some countries have been
consistent in steering its development, while others may have just presented at network meetings atleast once, and/or
joined in conference calls a few times.
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Genuine security, the long-term goal of the IWNAM, means the ending of all forms of
violence, and particularly the ending of forms of governance driven by militarized security.
According to Dr. Gwyn Kirk, co-founder for the IWNAM, militarism is a “collection of
institutions, investments, culture and values…War is the climax, the point of all the preparation.
Militarism is the underlying system that generates wars… Its components are economic,
systemic, people’s investments, patriotism, and also political investments or beliefs” (James and
Kirk 2008). The IWNAM's analysis of military violence is based on the perspectives of
survivors of military violence, and feminist and anti-bases activists who critique histories of
western imperialism and colonialism that set the legal precedent4 for the bi-lateral agreements
hosting U.S. military bases in South Korea, Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, Guam, Hawaii, and
Puerto Rico. The IWNAM has brought together individuals who speak to the negative impacts
of militarism, particularly when equated with economic development and progress, and how this
equation leads to gendered interpersonal relationships in societies (Sturdevant and Stotzfus
1992), causes environmental damage (Kirk 1997), and colonizes indigenous cultures (Niheu
2007, Women Working for a Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific, Eds 1987).
The IWNAM meetings have facilitated the sharing of information across South Korea,
Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, Guam, Australia, Marshall Islands, U.S. and Puerto Rico to
understand militarism according to a race, class, gender, and nation framework (Kirk and
Okazawa-Rey 2004, Women for Genuine Security 2007).5 This has led to a systematic analysis
of the gendering of society, from states that send soldiers, to states that receive them. For
example, class inequities in sender states make poorer populations targets for military
recruitment. The increase in government investment in the military industry makes it an
attractive career for job security and livelihood for all genders, ethnicities and classes. 6 Military
training includes “Rest and Recreation” in which racial stereotypes of Asian women as sexually
compliant legitimizes the rise and patronage of brothels around military bases and sex tourism in
4
The women in the network have discussed histories of U.S., Japanese and Spanish imperialism that underpin the
presence of bases. But also, the history of bi-lateral military agreements, such as the Status of Forces Agreements in
S. Korea and Japan, and the Visiting Forces Agreement in the Philippines, serve as instances in a long history of
western nation's legal dominance over eastern nation's sovereignties. See Kayaoglu 2010, Chalmers 2000, and
Auslin 2004.
5
Kirk, Gwyn and Margo Okazawa-Rey. (2004) Women’s Lives Multicultural Perspectives, Third Edition. New
York: McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. Women for Genuine Security (2007). What is Genuine Security? Website.
6
According to the National Priorities Project (NPP) analysis of U.S. Discretionary Spending, FY 2013, plans to be
distributed in these ways: 1) Military 57%, 2) Education—6%, 3) Government—6%, 4) Housing and Community
6%, 5) Veterans' Benefits—5%, 6) Health—5%, 7) International Affairs—4%, 8) Energy and Environment—3%, 9)
Science—3%, 10) Labor—2%, 11) Transportation—2%, 12) Food & Agriculture—1% (National Priorities Project
2011). In addition, NPP found that during FY 2010, there was not find a strong correlation between an increase in
military recruitment and unemployment; rather they found that there was an increase in applicants, and the
applicants were better qualified that in the past (National Priorities Project 2011).
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Asia. Patriarchal cultures, products of histories of imperialism and colonialism infringing and
transforming the social structures of indigenous cultures, create the contexts where women and
girls fall into the prostitution industry due to economic need, or lack of family or community
support for alternatives (Sturdevant and Stoltzfus 1992). Within these countries, cases of sexual
abuse are underreported because of fear that perpetrators will not be reported (Cachola et al
2008). The United States has had a powerful global reach, influencing culture, trade and
economic development in other parts of the world. Throughout the years, non-western nations
have had to interoperate with global trends, led by economically powerful countries. This has
facilitated neo-colonialism, the implementation of governments and leaders to configure national
development to accommodate the geo-political interests of more powerful countries, rather than
the needs of their own domestic markets and citizenries.7 Genuine security recognizes that
militarized security is the dominant, normalized culture that structures our global and national
systems. Therefore, the task of genuine security is something that must be practiced, in
organized action and in communication, from the ground up. This then impels people at local
levels to self-reflect on their own social relationships, to assess how militaristic and consumptive
national and nation-to-nation governments shape their own social relationships. Genuine
security is also about communities coming together to transform these dynamics by articulating
why militarized security is actually not secure, and that there needs to be other ways to live
securely without depending on militarism (Hoshino 2011).8 Community organizations in the
IWNAM have attempted to do this through consciousness-raising education, creative and
pragmatic skills-building, and non-polarizing community organizing tactics to build spaces
where new discourses of security can emerge and be practiced.
Short Term Goal: the Demilitarizing Fashion Show as an Organizing System
The circulation of camouflage design in high fashion catwalks of Milan, Macy's, and
Diesel to neighborhood fabric stores where families buy and create camouflage curtains for their
children's rooms, or pajamas for their sons; the way that camouflage is a fashion statement by
youth of color to feel and express a sense of strength and security as they feel under siege by
dominant institutional powers; the way that people don't realize how they are promoting the
military industrial complex through their consumption of camouflage as a fashionable
commodity, are examples of the pervasiveness of military cultural normalization in American
7
An example of this is Walden Bello's analysis of the structural adjustment plans implemented in the Philipppines
(Bello et al 1984). Also, the bi-lateral military bases in the countries of S. Korea, Japan, Philippines, Guam, Hawai'i
and Puerto Rico are examples of the U.S. geopolitical interests shaping the environment, society, politics and
economics of host governments in order to house and operate bases as nodes within the apparatus of the globalized
military industrial complex.
8
Hoshino, Lina. (2011) Living Along the Fenceline. Film.
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societies (Alvarenga and Ahn 2008). The producers of the Demilitarizing9 Fashion Show sought
to contextualize the U.S. position in the issue of militarism as inherent and embedded in our
popular culture and everyday life. This brings our attention to the U.S. citizenry's complicity in
militarism, in order for us to take responsibility for the wars and violence that are waged using
American tax dollars and members of the military.
Types of Records
The Demilitarizing Fashion Show was created by the Women of Color Resource Center
(WCRC), and it was initially called the Runway Peace Project (RPP). The goal of this project
was to take a critical look at how militarism has invaded our closets and influences the general
public's passivity about endless occupations and wars overseas. The Fashion Show was launched
in Oakland, California on May 2005 as a feminist, popular education project. The RPP included
an Interactive Multimedia toolkit: a 10-minute documentary, Fashion Resistance to Militarism, a
slide show on “15 Steps to Create Your Own Fashion Show,” information and statistics called
“The 411: What Every Girl Should Know (about militarism),” and discussion questions and
projects to talk about militarism in groups (WCRC 2006-2009) From then on, the RPP was
produced at conferences and community events all across the country and internationally.
Flyers were created to promote each fashion show.10 Photographs of models wearing
each outfit were taken. In some instances, photographs and associated scripts were archived on
websites and blogs. Some videos and photographs of fashion shows were uploaded to social
media platforms. The outfits themselves, however, were also records. Weaving follows the
grammar of storytelling—intertwining different kinds of textile into a fabric that encompasses a
wider space is like the connecting of a series of different events into a whole, meaningful
experience worth sharing. The process of making outfits was a process of weaving people’s life
stories and symbolically uniting them through fabric. The process did not follow a linear,
hierarchical, exclusionary logic. The process of outfit creation was about people sharing their
stories, listening to one another, inspiring others to tell their story. It took time for people to
build relationships and trust with one another, to share stories and their representations into the
outfit. Performatively and microcosmically, through the fashion show production, each outfit
represented the stories of a community member; each aspect designed onto an outfit symbolized
an element in the grammar of the materialized story. The outfit became the story told on the
9
I use demilitarizing instead of anti-military, which often connotes being against military persons. Demilitarization
is the removal of military forces from an area (Oxford Dictionary 2005-2007). Demilitarizing would then be the
process of removing military institutions, which requires understanding how people have become part of operating
those institutions. Demilitarization is not an issue of targeting individuals and their chosen careers, but an issue of
history and governance systems that have created the social and cultural contexts through which military institutions
exist as a societal industry, and military enlistment has become a career option.
10
An example is the Runway Peace Project postcard that was promoted on the US Labor Against the War website
(WCRC n.d.)
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body, and in the words spoken aloud through the emcee who served as a storyteller of the script
that accompanied the outfit.11 Macrocosmically, each model, outfit, and script are elements
woven into the fashion show production. Written and electronic records were created throughout
the pre-production stages of the fashion show, to take notes of brainstorming sessions, to keep
people accountable to their tasks, and to help meet deadlines. Some videos, photos and websites
served as records to create histories of the fashion shows, compiling the different shows over
time, or other events with which fashion shows were affiliated. Some fashion shows became
installations in other institutions, expressing the continuum of the fashion show's message as
they moved from context to context, attempting to bridge information to as many people and
areas.
Content of Records
The production of the fashion shows created opportunities for people to tell their story
about their relationship to militarism. I draw from the pro-peace/anti-war fashion show staged at
Syracuse University's Feminism and War Conference on October 12-21, 2006, and the
Passionista! Undressing Militarism and Globalization fashion show during Moana Nui
Conference on November 10, 2011, to present examples of people stories communicated through
the fashion show.
For the Syracuse University's Feminism and War Conference, Eli Painted Crow, a retired
Army veteran with 22 years of service, altered a desert camouflage uniform into a traditional ghi
called the “Warrior for Peace” outfit. She replaced official military badges with symbols of
peace like an illustrated peace dragon seal sewn onto the back of the shirt. Eli said, “This nation
was founded on violence, it does not know peace” (Roberts 2006). She enlisted before her 21st
birthday, as a single mother with two children and no high school diploma. She served in many
positions and locations, but her last was to Iraq where she “observed Iraqi culture being erased
by U.S. soldiers, just as Native American culture had been”(Roberts 2006). Anuradha Bhagwati
became a Marine because she wanted to push her boundaries. “I wanted to be G.I. Jane,” she
said. But, her experience as a Captain in the Marines for five years taught her something
different. I found rampant sexism, racism, classism and homophobia. I was left wondering,
'What does a strong woman look like? A confident woman? [In the military,] I became
something hateful, not human'”(Roberts 2006).
For the Passionista! Fashion show, an Army reservist created a design called “Military
Straight Jacket: Commitment to the Nation?” The script accompanying this outfit said,
“Commitment to the Nation" [was] repeated over and over again during her ROTC
11
I correlate this practice of worn, designed cloth and storytelling to the production and performance of hula as an
archival system. The elements of hula, the music, song, worn cloth, and moving body, are communicating memorybased information being communicated in auditory, visual and tactile ways (Stillman 2002).
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enlistment. Her outfit questions the motivation under those words and behind those who
choose military service. According to the National Priorities Project, of the 70,026
military recruits in Fiscal Year 2010, 1,111 came from U.S. Possessions and Territories,
including the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin
Islands, and foreign addresses, including military postal addresses. The promise of a
green card and citizenship is what commonly attracts Asia Pacific migrants to join the
military because to be a U.S. citizen means they can access health care, higher education,
and a decent standard of living for their families. While cash and US citizenship are
powerful enticements for joining, she wants viewers to recognize soldiers underneath the
numbers of dead, and honor the complex human beings under the uniform as sisters and
mothers, brothers and fathers, and as all our children” (WVWS et al 2011).
These women of color who served or are serving in the U.S. military speak to histories of
colonialism and neo-colonialism that underpin their participation in the military. Eli Painted
Crow explains that she joined to support her family. But also that serving in Iraq caused her to
remember her own history of Anglo-American colonialism over Native Americans, and realize
the patterns of colonialism that was being reproduced as she participated in the campaign in Iraq.
Anuradha illuminated how military culture is internalized prior to joining the military, because
ideas of strength as a woman was fed to her by mass media depictions of military serving
women. The designer of the Military Straight Jacket designer illuminates the U.S. global
hegemony that has determined development narratives overseas. As U.S. possessions and
territories struggle to find their own development models, they also reckon with the development
narratives and pressures of colonial and elite powers that seek to keep these lands as possessions
for their own global strategies.12 The designer emphasized that the people from U.S. possessions
and territories under the uniform should also be humanized in anti-war struggles because they are
products of colonial and neo-colonial structural system. It is this structural system that should be
reconfigured, through new narratives of development that should be created, articulated and
infrastructurally designed, so that people know they do not have to become militarized in order
to progress.
An Archival Perspective on the Fashion Show
The idea of reconfiguring governing structures is an archival issue. Archives and
recordkeeping systems have been the informational life blood for the development, coordination,
communication and memory of bureaucratic institutions, particularly imperial governments that
12
I draw on post-colonial militarization in the Pacific according to Teresia Teiwa who argues that militaris also
“something that is made as well as co-constructed; and in parts of the Pacific, indigenous people have been active
participants in such co-constructions” (Teaiwa 2005). She quotes (Underwood 1985).
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managed vast expanses of territory and populations.13 The culture of power that is practiced
through governance is also expressed discursively and content wise through the archival
structure and its recorded contents; the archival system remembers, performs and communicates
the institution's logic, thoughts and values, which inform its animation and activity.14 I draw
from the Passionista! Fashion show production as an example of archival system that takes into
account the stories of people, recorded into outfits and scripts, which in turn shape the
organizational structure that holds the coordinated activity of the fashion show production.
A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is a system that exhibits certain behaviors like
learning, self-organization, emergence, co-evolution, etc. (Gupta and Anish 2012). I draw from
cognitive and critical theorists to explain how apsects of CAS help to understand the
development of the fashion show as an organizational memory system amongst U.S. and Hawai'i
partners in the IWNAM.15 Cognitive theorists Humberto Maturana and Francisco.J. Varela
describe learning and self-organization as autopoiesis, or “biological process of connection and
interaction, whereby life or the system furthers itself.” In my research, I interpret this as
information exchange and memory functions of archival systems that facilitate the continuity of
knowledge over time and space. Critical Theorists Gilles-Deleuze and Féliz Guattari describe
emergence and co-evolution as a “new way of writing and thinking that allows the competing
narratives and ontologies to interrogate each other so that the hidden spatial and temporal
orderings can become apparent.”16 Even though knowledge is learned from the past, there is
critical reflection on that previous information, and new interpretations of old and new data, to
arrange their structuring and presentation for emergent information. The fashion show is an
example of the continuum of IWNAM's record creation practices generated over time, across
different types of records, such as dance, song, fabric, quilt making, painting, and photographs.
In an interview with Gwyn Kirk, one the co-founders of the IWNAM, she discussed how
integrating art and culture into meetings were important because,
“it was a way of expressing hopes for a more peaceful world, a world of genuine security.
13
Spain is an example of a highly bureaucratic government that left behind archival traces of its imperial and
colonizing activities in the western hemisphere and the Pacific. For a history of Spanish in the American West, see
Stawski 2006. The American Southeast, South and Southwest are also documented as being impacted by Spanish
contact. Evidence of this can be found in the Archivo General de Indias. A traveling exhibit of records from this
archive presented this information. See Historic New Orleans Collection 2010.
14
I draw from Johanna Drucker (2009) who explains how structure has a discursive power in shaping the
understanding of meaning. She explains how white spaces on a page, like headers and identations, structure
dialectical meanings with the text that influence the act of reading. Similarly, Luciana Duranti studied how records
hold traces of the institutional context from which they were produced. This allows the bureaucratic reader of that
record to understand its official function, in order to understand which “correct” action the reader should take to
contribute to the “correct” functioning of the institution (Duranti 1998).
15
I also recognize that partners have learned, self-organised, emerged and co-evolved through the exchanges and
experiences learned through the IWNAM gatherings over time.
16
The quotes from Maturana and Varela, and Deleuze and Guatarri are from Turnbull 2010.
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It was something of beauty where militarism was ugly. It was a way of expressing that
wasn't reliant on language and the need for translation, so people could communicate
more directly. And it was something that tapped the heart, and people's feelings about
optimism and hope. It was a way of visioning something creative and colorful and
beautiful, rather than being analytical, and only analytical. I think part of it was the idea
we could connect to other people through things that were beautiful” (Kirk 2012).
The fashion show's juxtaposition, inter-relation, and/or association across different contexts
illuminates an archival system that draws from knowledge learned from international, national
and local contexts (WCRC 2006-2009), made accessible at personal and community based
levels, while also facilitating further learning, action and creation of new archives through the
participants.
Continuity and Emergence
Each fashion show drew upon themes from previous fashion shows, such as using outfits
from before. But also, later fashion shows created new outfits. Below is a table of the names of
outfits between the Fashion Shows in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011 [see Figure 1 for details].17 I
played a role in this process as a model during the 2009 fashion show, as an archivist of the
Fashion Show Project, and as a co-producer of the 2011 fashion show. I personally experienced
how the fashion shows traveled and spread, which was through sharing of ideas passed on to
country groups through individuals, such as myself, who would travel between groups.18 If the
group was interested in putting together a fashion show, facilitators would show examples of the
past outfits, and ask questions about how militarism impacted the lives of people in that
community.
17
This does not include all the fashion shows produced by women affiliated with, or with women, in the IWNAM.
I was a co-founder of Women's Voices Women Speak, the Hawai'i based group of the IWNAM, in 2004, after I
participated in the 5th meeting, then called the East-Asia-U.S.-Puerto Rico Women's Network Against Militarism
(earlier name of the IWNAM). Upon completing my undergraduate degree, I moved to San Francisco to pursue my
Master's Degree. In San Francisco, I participated in the Women for Genuine Security, the U.S. based partner of the
IWNAM. My direct participation in the IWNAM has been based in these two organizations.
18
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Figure 1. Names of outfits of Fashion Shows in 2007, 2009, 2010, and 2011
Overtime, some outfits were shared. For example, these outfits were shared across different
contexts [see Figures 2-5]. The continuity of these outfits is due to relationships between
organizers of fashion shows who would ensure that outfits from past shows were brought to the
upcoming ones. Outfits would be taken to conferences, or mailed.
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The emergence of added-on, or new outfit designs was due to the curriculum around fashion
show production that encouraged people to create renditions of past oufits, or create their own
outfit and fashion show that reflected their own story and relationship to militarism [See Figures
6-8].
* Ea is Hawaiian for sovereignty, rule or independence.
** Fo Realz Kine is a Hawai'i based pidgin English phrase which can be translated as “the real” or “authentic.”
The Passionista! Fashion Show in 2011 presented some entirely new outfits that
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represented Hawai'i's relationship to militarism. These records speak to the community's
perspective of how they have become embedded within militarized contexts, and also the
dynamic activity of people who resist and create new narratives of security [see Figures 9-10].
* Hawaii pidgin English for Uncle.
** Translated from Hawaii Pidgin and Hawaiian as “Uncle Eat Right.”
The emergence of these new outfits reflected the contextual specificity of a community people's
relationship to militarism, which was articulated through renditions of previous outfits, or new
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ideas and associations that previous outfits generated.
Another continuous theme was the critique of the everyday-ness of military culture in
fashion. This resonated with U.S. and Hawai'i based communities, as senders of U.S. soldiers
abroad. Also, there were shared themes of resistance even within their militarized national
identities. The stories of Patriotic Women contrasted the stories of women's resistance in that the
former reflects a fashion and identity based on the dominant national narrative of militarized
development. But the latter represents new articulations of identity and culture that facilitates
rethinking the normalized narratives of militarism,and trying on new ideas to re-construct one's
identity and ways of living. Unko Spam and Unko ʻ Ai Pono represent the tensions between
military culture in the use of Spam in popular local diets, but also the emergence of Native
Hawaiian food practices that provide opportunities for people to make new choices about their
food consumption, long term health and overall food security.
Another archival aspect of the fashion show is the content and types of records that
reflect the structure and values of the organization. What is different about the fashion show's
organizational structure from a top-down, bureaucratic institution, is the non-alienating, inclusive
discourse around who can participate in its production. Non-military and military, women, men,
LGBT, children, adults, elders, people of different ethnicities could participate and were
represented through their outfits and scripts, because the fashion show production was based on
an alliance building organizational model. Alliance building is a form of organizational
development that prioritizes relationship building. The presence of the military service's stories
were valued, as much as those of resistance, because their experiences is what feminist scholaractivist Margo Okazawa-Rey calls “first-hand details and concrete examples of theoretical
discussions” about what militarism is, and how it sustains itself; they “cut to the heart of
militarism: the necessary dehumanization – in myriad ways – of both military personnel and 'the
enemy'” (Roberts 2006, Enloe 2000). Another example of interrupting alienation was the
presentation and activity around the Fo Realz Kine Security Blanket during the 2011 fashion
show, which challenged the divide between the fashion show performers and the audience.19 As
a participant in the planning of this fashion show, we ensured that each table and seat was given
pieces of fabrics and pens. During the performance, people were invited to write their own
vision of genuine security on those fabrics. As the last presentation of the show, the Fo Realz
Kine Security Blanket was presented and held up by all the models, and the audience was able to
pin up their redefinition of security upon the quilt. The alliance building organizational logic of
19
This reflected the model of Augusto Boal's guerilla theater that sought to eliminate the elitism of stage theater by
creating contexts where audiences were involved in the unfolding of the play, and could change the play's narrative.
Downing, John D.H. Popular Theater, Street Theater, Performance Art, and Culture-Jamming. In Radical Media:
Rebellious Communication and Social Movements. Tamara Villareal Ford, Geneve Gil, Laura Stein, Eds. Sage:
Thousand Oaks.
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the fashion shows reveals a practice of weaving together seemingly polarized discourses into
self-reflexive and educational spaces where communities can discuss the every-day ness of
militarism, and how transformation is possible when relationships are built to humanize and
support one another in finding one's voice and role to unfold and materialize a collective vision
of peace and justice.
Conclusion
The fashion show, within the context of the U.S. and Hawai'i, is an archival system that
facilitates militarized people to confront their historical complicity in participating and
perpetuating the dominant military culture, while remembering and re-articulating one's own
experiences of resistance against imperialism, colonialism, violation, displacement and
annihilation. The fashion show offers an alternative organizational structure for community
organizing other than feeling debilitated with guilt or apathy due to polarizing political
discourses of being with or against militarism—discourses that often construct the imagined
boundaries of essentialized organizational structures. The demilitarizing fashion shows created
the context for the juxtaposition, inter-relation and/or association of seemingly polarized
discourses and relationships to militarism, to illuminate that it is not the individual at fault, but
structural systems underpinning each individual as the problem hindering relationships and
collaborations toward collective healing, peace and justice.
What is important to take away is how the elements of the fashion show are woven
together through a dynamic, complex adaptive memory system that discursively and literally
communicates the IWNAM's philosophy and epistemology of genuine security. Each person's
story was materialized into nuanced outfits; each person, outfit and story woven into a
production. Each production documented and archived through photos, videos, websites,
documents, textiles and oral records, to inform the next fashion show organizer the community's
possibilities of telling their own relationship to militarism. The fashion show is a method of
record creation, continuity and emergence and is an example of a community archive that is not
solely the material records kept in an institutional archive. It is an archive that is co-created by
the creativity of community members coming together to produce stories, but that can dissipate
and hibernate until it remerges at another time, in perhaps slightly different form. In these ways,
the community's memory transforms and travels into other spaces, drawing from and informing
the collective memory of another place and context. The method of archiving prioritizes people
learning, reflecting and creating, respecting past archives, and inspiring the generation of more
archives.
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