Ulrich Lehmann

Making as Knowing: Epistemology and Technique in Craft

Abstract The essay employs the orthodox canon of philosophical discourses in order to inquire into the relationship between episteme and techne. Platonic and Aristotelian postulates are used to trace the historical understandings of the connection between knowing and making in the development and execution of a craft. The metaphor of weaving—instrumental in Platonic discourse—is employed as the thread running through the discussion; this metaphor is also employed to guide the application of episteme and techne to textile production, in particular through a structural analysis of the pleated fabrics used by Mariano Fortuny and Issey Miyake.

Language of the PurSuit: Cary Grant's clothes in Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest

Lehmann uses the structuralist approach of Roland Barthes to analyze Hitchcocks North by Northwest. He argues that the film and Cary Grants role are best explained by looking at appearances - because they are deceptive - and not at hermeneutical codes, cinematic quotations, or self-referential truths. Lehmann believes his argument is exemplified by Grants suit, which exerts a continuous presence throughout the duration of the film and thus stands analogous to the suits normative presence in mens fashion throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.