Essays - Eliciting
Published 30-06-2026
Keywords
- Suiting,
- Barthes,
- Mythologies,
- Gender,
- Race
How to Cite
HallGeisler, K. (2026). Suit Up! The Business Suit as Myth and Revolution in The Intuitionist. Fashion Highlight, (7), 60–67. https://doi.org/10.36253/fh-3819
Copyright (c) 2026 Kristen HallGeisler
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Abstract
The business suit has long been a symbol of American achievement in business, particularly in the twentieth century. Using Colson Whitehead’s debut novel The Intuitionist, a work of literary speculative fiction, we can see that the suit also carries the weight of being a mythological construction, according to Roland Barthes’s definition, as well as the power of what Barthes identifies as Revolutionary speech when the suit is worn with deliberate precision by the novel’s protagonist, Lila Mae Watson.
References
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