archical mode of operation immediately taking place. We can see this old model
still at work as various fashionistas and bloggers have their “15 minutes of fame”.
Instead, we must build shared action spaces, both for interpretation and hands-on
production. One could argue that this is what “subversive” subcultures have always
done, perhaps most famously the punks or other newer rebels (Hebdige 1988; Pol-
hemus 1994). But to follow the method of Liberation theology, our aim is not to
break out or oppose the system or celebrate our difference, but instead to reinter-
pret fashion from within. What is important to keep in mind is that the heretic
keeps the faith intact and disagrees out of interest and faithfulness, not of disbelief.
Heresy is an act of communal devotion, building a religious practice engaged in
social and organizational change, not an act of enmity with the aim of wrecking
the system. Instead it is interested in reform. It is a deep engagement in how faith
is managed and organized, liberating it from too dogmatic or stiff control. An act
of love, not of hate.
The liberation theologist could reverse engineer the belief system and learn how it
is constructed by studying the holy scripture, the theology, the rituals and the
structure, to find the best way to plug-in. Use the forces running through it, form
communities and employ the released intensities for social change. Run own lines
between practices, unleash the forces, and just like the heretics of the Free Spirit
who commanded the Holy Trinity so they could “ride it as in a saddle” (Cohn 1957:
175).
One approach to heretic practices in fashion could be the Spanish YOMANGO
movement and their rhetoric and tactics of commodity “liberation”. Similarly to
the heretics of the Free Spirit they use they unleash the forces of myth as they use
the systems of consumerism and fashion against themselves. Where fashion and
the society of the “spectacle” (Lebord 1994) has turned protest into an aesthetic
lifestyle, YOMANGO turns lifestyle back into action, dissolving the demarcation
between the two.
Leonardo Boff’s illustration (1986) shows two
conceptualizations of how the Church can be can
be organized. The left a typical hierarchy, or “ca-
thedral”, and the right a rhizome-like “bazaar”,
consisting of autonomous base communities. The
hard coded control and power structure of the
cathedral could, according to Boff, be organized as
an open and flatter structure. The “code” of the
system is the same, but shared and interpreted dif-
ferently in the two models: indeed very similar to the
Windows vs Linux modes of assembly in the world
of software. We can see two vastly different lived
worlds share similar ideas and diagrams of how
their “operating system” should be arranged.