cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/57405501

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“As with hit tunes and hit pictures and hit entertainments, fashion rushes in to fill the vacuum in our senses created by technological displacements. Perhaps that is why it seems to be the expression of such a colossal preference while it lasts. James Joyce gives it a key role in Finnegans Wake in his section on the Prankquean. The Prankquean is the very expression of war and aggression. In her life, clothing is weaponry: “I’m the queen of the castle and you’re the dirty rascal.” In the very opening line of Finnegans Wake — “riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s…”— Joyce thus indicates the reversal of nature that has taken place since the fall of man. It is not the world of Adam and Eve, but one in which there is priority of Eve over Adam. Clothing as weaponry had become a primary social factor. Clothing is anti-environmental, but it also creates a new environment. It is also anti- the elements and anti-enemies and anti- competitors and anti-boredom.” - Page 21, 1968 “War and Peace in the Global Village”, Marshall McLuhan