DEAD END: The European Movement and Disappearance of Local Traditional African Clothing Designs, Styles, and Cultural Meaning. An Exchange of Cultural Identity.

Abstract: This thesis aims at showcasing the movement of African cultural meaning from Africa to Europe by Europeans in their involvement in the African slave trade as well as the colonization of Africa, which was the imprisonment of the African cultural expression as well as a limitation of its development and further production. The thesis also addresses one of the reason for the global circulation of the European culture, which is the search and achievement of absolute power and control over the minds of its conquests in order to become a dominant culture. Note, however that the act of becoming a dominant culture stem from the European cultural persuasion of the dominance of its culture by its self and not a reflection of epistemological and ontological superiority. Note also that in claiming to be a dominant culture, the European culture is in reality only in control of its conquests, which are cultures whose nature is to its full knowledge, and whose meaning it distributes upon will and purpose. Therefore, the movement of African cultural values, norms and beliefs to Europe and the Euro‐Atlantic world, implies that the ideas from which the European fashion system´s inspiration is founded, are in essence not only European derived. This conclusion is based on a critical analysis of the nature of the European culture and its authentic self, a self that produces European culture.