Creation and salvation -- What is the contemporary? -- K. -- On the uses and disadvantages of living among specters -- On what we can not do -- Identity without the person -- Nudity -- The glorious body -- Hunger of an ox : considerations on the Sabbath, the feast, and inoperativity -- The last chapter in the history of the world.

Encompassing a wide range of subjects, the ten masterful essays gathered here may at first appear unrelated to one another. In truth, Giorgio Agamben's latest book is a mosaic of his most pressing concerns. Take a step backward after reading it from cover to cover, and a world of secret affinities between the chapters slowly comes into focus. Take another step back, and it becomes another indispensable piece of the finely nuanced philosophy that Agamben has been patiently constructing over four (...) decades of sustained research. If nudity is unconcealment, or the absence of all veils, then _Nudities_ is a series of apertures onto truth. A guiding thread of this collection—weaving together the prophet's work of redemption, the glorious bodies of the resurrected, the celebration of the Sabbath, and the specters that stroll the streets of Venice—is inoperativity, or the cessation of work. The term should not be understood as laziness or inertia, but rather as the paradigm of human action in the politics to come. Itself the result of inoperativity, _Nudities_ shuttles between philosophy and poetry, philological erudition and unexpected digression, metaphysical treatise and critique of modern life. And whether the subject at hand is personal identity or the biometric apparatus, the slanderer or the land surveyor, Kafka or Kleist, every page bears the singular imprint of one of the most astute philosophers of our time. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe present paper examines the Eckhartian motives in Derrida's critique of Levinas’ concept of the “Other”. The focus is put on the Husserlian concept of alter ego that is at the core of the debate between Levinas and Derrida. Against Levinas, Derrida argues that alter is not an epithet that expresses a mere accidental modification of the ego, but an indicator of radical exteriority. Interestingly enough, this position is virtually identical with Meister Eckhart's interpretation of the famous proposition from Exodus (...) 3:14 “I am who I am”. Eckhart claims that the pronoun ego denotes the absolutely simple substance of the uncreated intellect, which can, by definition, never receive any accidental determination whatsoever. The reduplication of the “I am” is by no means tautological, but expresses the intra-divine dynamic of the Father who engenders the Son as his perfect equal and alter ego. This transcendental conception of egoity also governs the relationships between human beings: the ethical encou.. (shrink)

This paper attempts to demonstrate that in Emmanuel Levinas’ thinking, justice is the necessary opening – and dissolution- of the “I” which makes fecundity – procreation – possible, and that in that same measure makes possible that the Logos transforms into a “desire to say” and the world into a “among us”. At the same time it wants to demonstrate that this notion of justice is directly related to the ideas of expression and nudity. Due to which the “Other” (...) imposes itself in front of the “same” , as man, singular and vulnerable, and that in the same measure it is linked to the notion of the Face and its particular mode of manifestation. In this respect, we propose that justice. As long as necessary condition, can fund an ethically constituted world, where an “erotic order” mandates over logic orderings. (shrink)

continent. 1.2 (2011): 145-147. Here I accoutred myself in my new habiliments; and, having em- ployed the same precautions as before, retired from my lodging at a time least exposed to observation. It is unnecessary to des- cribe the particulars of my new equipage; suffice it to say, that one of my cares was to discolour my complexion, and give it the dun and sallow hue which is in most instances characteristic of the tribe to which I assumed to belong; (...) and that when my metamorphosis was finished, I could not, upon the strictest ex- amination, conceive that any one could have traced out the per- son of Caleb Williams in this new disguise. William Godwin Caleb Williams (352). Giorgio Agamben. Nudities . Trans. David Kishik and Stefan Pedatella. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011. 144 pp. | 10 illustrations. | ISBN: 9780804769501 | $16.95 A. The Protective Overcoat. The most pervasive, resilient, robust, sneaky, and significant concept in all of Giorgio Agamben’s essays is that of separation. This is not the same as alienation. Separation is more nostalgic, for Agamben valorizes an ancient world in which human society and its beings were not subject to such separation. He implies that these separations are damaging to human beings, crippling them at the very level of their identities. $4.99 B. The Handsome Gloves. Giorgio Agamben’s Nudities , like Profanations before it, employs a wide range of subjects in order to establish separation as a metaphor, in much the same way that interdisciplinary scholars have adopted Michel Foucault’s concepts in order to rethink societies and texts. The longest essay from Profanations, entitled “In Praise of Profanation,” laments humankind’s inability to profane as the result of what Walter Benjamin has called “the capitalist religion.” Likewise, “Nudity” adopts a pessimistic stance on the Christian theological tradition’s perverse asphyxiation of the unclothed body. $2.50 C. The Hoop Earrings. Religion separates humans from things by procuring for itself items as “sacred,” thus taking them out of common use. In this state, human beings are unable to play with them, unable to change their use-value. They become off-limits, museified. $1,499.00 D. The Uncomfortable Shoes. Biometrics polices identity, replacing meaningful metrics of identity. It is a deplorable situation that leaves human beings in danger of, and indeed already victims of, mass persecution. $111.75 E. The Prince Albert. One could characterize Giorgio Agamben’s desire to catalogue a history of ignorance as a recognition that human beings are separated from knowledge by language. Where then is the prophet, and how shall we be saved? $49.50 + tip F. The Corset. Franz Kafka’s character of Joseph K. has put himself on trial, as in Roman trials when the Kalumniator was marked with the letter K. The torture he undergoes is meant to elicit a confession of the truth. It is possible that Giorgio Agamben perceives his role as a philosopher to be confined to self-trial, and that with every passage he flays the unclothed page with prophetic intent. $27.00 G. The Derby. Giorgio Agamben himself tries to bridge various separations through exploratory play. He is not a performative writer semantically, but his exploratory style is rooted in the play spirit. His strategy of numbering points is almost comical, yet it is not misleading. It is play, after all, not ruse. He denudes with pecks, like carrion on a tattered corpse. $11.00 H. The Trousers. Although Giorgio Agamben is elsewhere concerned with the profanation of religion’s apparatuses, in essay nine he would like to consider what is consumed during days of inoperativity, how religion governs these, and how to account for our binges and purges. Inoperativity is inextricably bound to feasting, to the festival. $24.50 I. The Stylish Belt. The only essay in Nudities to contain photographs is the essay entitled, “Nudity.” All of these photographs project human bodies. $.01 I The aim here is not to tap into an original state prior to the separation but to comprehend and neutralize the apparatus that produced this separation. (66) II The contemporary is he who firmly holds his gaze on his own time so as to perceive not its light but rather its darkness. (13) III We can therefore only experience nudity as a denudation and a baring, never as a form and a stable possession. (65) IV Just as genius and talent originally distinct and even opposite—are nevertheless united in the work of the poet, so the work of creation and the work of salvation, inasmuch as they represent the two powers of a single God, remain in some way secretly conjoined. (6) V In our culture, the face-body relationship is marked by a fundamental asymmetry, in that our faces remain for the most part naked, while our bodies are normally covered. (88) VI Every man initiates a slanderous trial against himself. (21) VII The glorious body is not some other body, more agile and beautiful, more luminous and spiritual; it is the body itself, at the moment when inoperativity removes the spell from it and opens it up to a new possible common use. (103) VIII As Kleist understood so well, the relationship with a zone of nonknowledge is a dance. (114) IX The deactivation of this apparatus retroactively operates, therefore, as much on nature as on grace, as much on nudity as on clothing, liberating them from their theological signature. (90) X At any rate, whether festive inoperativity precedes religion or results from the profanation of its apparatuses, what is essential here is a dimension of praxis in which simple, quotidian human activities are neither negated nor abolished but suspended and rendered inoperative in order to be exhibited, as such, in a festive manner. (112) XI This is just how much [of] the land [the] surveyor is allowed to catch a glimpse. (36). (shrink)

The Italian thinker Giorgio Agamben has achieved large international recognition since his first book in the homo sacer-project, Homo sacer. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, was published in 1995. The project’s basic aim is to try and understand the fundamental relation between man and power, politics and theology, which Agamben gives the name biopolitics. Such a politics, Agamben writes in the introduction, is the very fundamental element of Western metaphysics, “because it occupies the threshold in which the articulation (...) between the living and logos is accomplished.” With relentless stringency scholars and researchers have analysed Agamben’s perhaps most famous concept, naked life, and related it to the history of religion, philosophy of law etc. The philosopher himself never thought that his term naked life would achieve such fame, as he said at a small conference at Iuav. However, what has been given less attention, if any, is the most obvious part in that concept: nudity. This holds the key, nonetheless, to understand Agamben’s thinking, because nudity is that very threshold holding together, as well as separating, life and logos, man and animal. Perhaps this is one of the reasons, if not needs, for Agamben writing a book with the telling title: Nudità. Centre in the present article is to discuss Agamben’s concept of nudity alongside that of naked life in thematizing the term shame which is central in this regard. Furthermore, the attempt to argue in favour of a conceptual use of the metaphor-naked life-shall also be unfolded. (shrink)

This article examines the ways in which contemporary western cultures have attempted to legitimize certain sites of bodily nakedness (such as communal showers, bathing children and other `public' displays) by maintaining a contextual space or frame which attempts to exclude the sexual. Noting the ways in which that legitimacy has broken down in recent decades, the article suggests that the slippage between the sexual and the naked results from both a breakdown in the `heterosexual matrix' as well as a postmodern (...) crisis of `the context'. (shrink)

The article attempts to address the issue of nudity and eroticism in stage and screen versions of Shakespeare’s plays. Elizabethan theatrical conventions and moral and political censorship of the English Renaissance did not allow for an explicit presentation of naked bodies and sexual interactions on stage; rather, these were relegated to the verbal plane, hence the bawdy language Shakespeare employed on many occasions. Conventions play a significant role also in the present-day, post-1960s and post-sexual revolution era, whereby human sexuality (...) in Western culture is not just alluded to, but discussed and presented in an open manner. Consequently, nudity on stage and screen in versions of Shakespeare’s plays has become more marked and outspoken. Indeed, in both filmic and TV productions as well as stage performances directors and actors more and more willingly have exposed human body and sexuality to the viewer/spectator. My aim is to look at such instances from the perspective of realism and realistic conventions that the three media deploy and the effect nudity/sex can have on the recipient. The conclusion is that theatre is most conventional and stark realism and directness of the message need to be carefully dosed. Similarly to the theatre, television, more specifically television theatre, is, too, a most direct genre, as television is inherently a live medium, the broadcasts of which occur here and now, in the present tense. Film is markedly different from the two previous forms of art: it is narrated in the past tense, thus creating a distance between what is shown and the viewer, and allowing for more literalness. Naturally, particular cases discussed in the article go beyond these rather simple divisions. (shrink)

This paper explores the dynamics of women's public nudity in the early Roman empire, centering particularly on two festival occasions—the rites of Venus Verticordia and Fortuna Virilis on April 1, and the Floralia in late April—and on the respective social and spatial contexts of those festivals: the baths and the theater. In the early empire, these two social spaces regularly remove or complicate some of the markers that divide Roman women by sociosexual status. The festivals and the ritual (...) class='Hi'>nudity within them focus attention on the negotiations of social boundaries within these spaces, and the occasions for cross-class identification among women they provide. (shrink)

This article revisits cultural controversies over female public nudity in Thai society. It uses Songkran’s topless dancing in 2011 and a bare-breast painting performance on the ‘Thailand’s Got Talent Show’ in 2012 to explore cultural and emotional clashes in Thailand’s 21st century. It shows that these two cases of public female nudity drew deep and divergent emotional responses from different groups in Thai society. These cases clearly revealed a clash in viewpoints with regard to Thai notions of feminine (...) respectability associated with national identity and women’s sexual expression. On the one hand, the controversies prompted moral panic and backlashes against women’s sexual rebelliousness. On the other hand, they set off counter-backlashes against hegemonic discourse that tends to normalise oppressive sexual culture, nationalism and totalitarianism. (shrink)

Stripping the Virgin Mary of the myths, stories, and dogmas surrounding her is a task that has particularly appealed to a branch of feminist theology which seeks to reclaim her as a figure of female empowerment. This article aims to explore the transformation of Mary’s body into an element of resistance in the work of some contemporary artists. By depicting her nude or semi-nude, artists disrupt the gender values commonly associated with the Virgin and open up alternative possibilities of affirmative (...) selfhood through her body. I contend that, in these works, the Virgin’s body functions as a ‘relational’ body that enters into dialogue with hitherto marginalized categories, such as the carnal, the sensual, the notion of fleshly materiality, or even the excluded sexualities of transgender people. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Finding a Pedagogical Framework for Dialogue about Nudity and Dance ArtSuzanne Jaeger (bio)"Nudity is like calling something 'Free Beer.' I always threaten to make people do stuff naked, and I'm all for it, but to me, it's usually more trouble than it's worth. If something is swinging around, that's all anybody looks at."—Mark Morris, choreographerIntroductionIn his article on nudity in theatre dance, philosopher Francis Sparshott observes (...) that because we live in a culture in which, for the most part, we remain clothed when in public, we wonder why the dancers in a particular performance of theatre dance are undressed.1 It can be at least a little shocking and often distracting. There are, of course, times when people are naked in public, for example, when seeing a physician, on a nude beach, when using a public change room, or when engaged in a sexual encounter. For the most part, however, we wear clothes in most social contexts. Even if we allow that performances are extraordinary public situations dissimilar from everyday social interactions, because nudity is not the usual condition even for theater dance, we may well wonder why a choreographer has chosen to have the dancers undressed. In other words, the question is fair enough.Certainly, creating some sense of shock or surprise in the audience is often what artists are seeking. Furthermore, they may also be playing on their own, the audience's, or their dancers' exhibitionism. These are all possible aspects of the experience of seeing theater dancers naked on stage. Exhibitionism is itself an interesting aesthetic value, about which much could be said. Exhibitionism is also, at times, tedious, such as when it comes as a [End Page 32] demand for attention that outweighs the interest that can be generated by what the exhibitionist is actually doing. We often expect artists to show us something that goes beyond them—something that focuses our attention and interests away from the artist and onto the work of art.In the following discussion I assume that choreographers sometimes choose to present their dancers undressed because they believe it contributes to the meanings of the dance as a work of art. It is this idea that nudity can be artistically meaningful that I wish to explore. If nudity is not used solely for commercial appeal, shock value, or exhibitionism but rather to contribute to meanings evoked by the dance as an artwork, what more can be said about how the audience has access to these meanings?I begin by defining "art dance" in relation to other kinds of dance practices and then consider a distinction between nudity and nakedness raised first by Kenneth Clark and John Berger in their analyses of meaning in oil paintings and other visual representations of the human form.2 I then introduce two ideas commonly discussed in some canonical literature in the philosophy of art: first, the claim that works of art express feelings; and second, the concept of form as it is used when talking about works of art. Although the discourses of philosophical aesthetics have since moved in new directions, and the notions of expression and aesthetic form are no longer central to the problems of the day, I return to these seminal ideas because they add to our understanding of how nudity can contribute meaning to a work of art dance.I also assume in the discussion that the success of using nudity in a dance work can only be judged on a case-by-case basis. The analyses of feeling and form are meant to provide a pedagogical framework for dialogue with students about the role of nudity in the aesthetics of art dance. The examples serve as illustrations of how one might interpret meanings in particular dance works that use nudity. The educational objective of my interpretations is to promote by example the capacity of art dance observers for experiencing, understanding, and becoming meaningfully involved with works of art dance that use nudity.Part One: Definition of Art DanceWhat I have to say about nudity is said with art or theater dance in mind rather than other forms of dance. This... (shrink)

Instances of nudity in Westworld can be put into three categories: Nudity as a beautiful art form, nudity as a sign of (male) dominance, and nudity as a sign of humanity or more to the point, nudity as a sign of becoming human. All the hosts presented as nudes in Westworld are idealized. The hosts are always more idealized in their form than either the human guests or the human directors of the park. Kenneth Clark (...) makes a key distinction between being naked, “being without clothes”, and the nude as a form of art. He imagines that the idealized beauty of the nude is analogous to the architecture of a building: It is a “balance between an ideal scheme and functional necessities”. The idealization of the human body and the createdness of the hosts come together in the main human theme of both the park's creators and its visitors: Control. (shrink)

England in the 1650s was the scene of a long series of prophetic and protest exhibitions of naked men and women in public places (streets, churches, universities...), causing scandal and misunderstanding among most of the public. These women and men went naked “as a sign”, thus renewing an episode of the Old Testament (Isaiah 20.2-3) by which they denounced the spiritual “nudity”, of those before whom they were exhibiting themselves. This practice sought to demonstrate what God was about to (...) inflict on them : a laying bare, a complete stripping of all their possessions, powers and social prerogatives. A gendered approach to these exhibitions of nudity reveals the theological-political and social stakes of a phenomenon that accompanied the birth and development of the Quaker movement and spread as far as New England. (shrink)

This article addresses the role of nudity on stage in the emergence of modernities in dance, focusing in particular on the largely unexplored context of Russia after the October Revolution of 1917. By studying the discourses about and reception of the work of two protagonists of the Russian “new dance” of the 1920s, Kassian Goleizovsky and Lev Lukin, the article questions the meaning that these choreographers sought to construct around the nudity on stage of the couple and the (...) group. This nudity reflected a break not only with the imperial heritage of classical dance and its gendered relationships between partners, but also the “free dance” introduced previously by Isadora Duncan during her tours in the country. (shrink)

Activists from the Femen movement, which emerged in Ukraine in 2008, demonstrate topless. Nudity for political reasons is not unanimously welcomed among feminists. Based on interviews with activists, this article examines the meaning of political nudity for the activists themselves and the gender effects of this mode of action. The analysis of topless mobilization sheds light on how activists overcome the prohibitions of nudity and on the reasons why these activists persevere in an activism that is still (...) perceived as deviant. (shrink)

In “What’s Wrong with the (Female) Nude?” A. W. Eaton argues that the female nude in Western art promotes sexually objectifying, heteronormative erotic taste, and thereby has insidious effects on gender equality. In this response, I reject the claim that sexual objectification is a phenomenon that can be generalized across the experiences of women. In particular, I argue that Eaton’s thesis is based on the experiences of women who are white, and does not pay adequate attention to the lives of (...) racialized women. This act of exclusion undermines the generality of Eaton’s thesis, and exposes a more general bias in discussions of the representation of women in art. Different kinds of gendered bodies have been subjected to different kinds of objectifying construal, and the ethics of nudity in art must be extended to take such variation into account. (shrink)

Changes in women’s clothing at the end of the eighteenth century in France (the revealing dresses worn by the merveilleuses) provoked a medical reaction. Physicians described the mode for such clothing as a harmful form of undressing ; in so doing, they sought to regulate the practices of women who followed fashion, and called for the preservation of individual and collective morality, beauty and health. Through a close and contextualized reading of a selection of medical texts, this article highlights the (...) gendered conceptions and standard knowledge underlying them, and examines the rhetorical devices and discursive strategies employed. These discourses, seeking both to dissuade and persuade, reveal how the medical gaze was in fact stripping and eroticizing the female body. By highlighting a moment when the clothed body was perceived as naked, the article contributes to the history of representations of female nudity. (shrink)

Can the government stick us with privacy we don't want? It can, it does, and according to this author, may need to do more of it. Privacy is a foundational good, she argues, a necessary tool in the liberty-lover's kit for a successful life. A nation committed to personal freedom must be prepared to mandate inalienable, liberty-promoting privacies for its people, whether they eagerly embrace them or not. The eight chapters of this book are reflections on public regulation of privacy (...) at home; isolation and confinement for punitive and health reasons; religious modesty attire; erotic nudity; workplace and professional confidentiality; racial privacy; online transactions; social networking; and the collection, use and storage of electronic data. (shrink)

Paradoxalement interdite sur les réseaux sociaux alors qu'elle domine le consumérisme pornographique, l'expérience de la nudité reste taboue dans la sphère publique. Seuls des actes de revendications politiques, des manifestations de genre contre la domination masculine et des images artistiques demeurent acceptables. Cet essai explore les présupposés, les valeurs, les pratiques de la nudité au sein de la société contemporaine. Il développe le droit à la nudité dans le respect de chacune et de chacun : l'exigence de la beauté, du (...) contact avec la nature et du respect de l'intégrité de la personne font de la nudité une écologie corporelle."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

Dreams of chase or pursuit, falling, sex, flying, nudity, failing an examination, one's own and other's death, fire, teeth falling out and some other themes experienced, even if only rarely, by many people all over the world have been labelled 'typical dreams'. This essay argues that typical dreaming, rather a syndrome of themes than monothematic, reflects an extraordinary state of mind and brain. Odd and particularly memorable perceptions, as well as emerging awareness of sleep and dreaming -- i.e. parallels (...) to lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, complex partial seizure, epileptic and migraine auras, and aspects of dreaming after trauma -- can be traced with some plausibility in all prominent variants of typical dreaming. When viewed from this perspective, for example, dream pursuers are much more a shadow of the bodily self than a metaphor for the psycho- biographical situation or evolutionarily implemented sparring partners who make dreamers fit for the struggle for survival during waking hours. (shrink)

This paper discusses a test of a hypothetical model of the role of perceived ethical feelings about the use of female nudity/erotic stimuli in print advertising. Specifically, the linkages between perceived ethicalness of the use of the print ad (as measured by the Reidenbach and Robin ethics scale) and attitude toward the ad, brand, and purchase intention are explored.

Este artículo intenta poner en evidencia que en el pensamiento de Emmanuel Lévinas la justicia es la condición necesaria de apertura -y disolución- del "yo" que hace posible la fecundidad -la "procreación"-, y que en esa misma medida el Logos se transforme en un "quiere decir" y el mundo en un "entre-nosotros". Asimismo, evidencia que esta noción de justicia está directamente vinculada a las ideas de "expresión" y "desnudez", gracias a las cuales el Otro se impone ante el "mismo" como (...) hombre, singular y vulnerable; y que en igual medida está enlazada a la noción de rostro y a su modo particular de manifestación. Proponemos, en este sentido, que la justicia, en tanto que condición necesaria puede fundar un mundo constituido éticamente, en el que prime un "orden erótico" por sobre los ordenamientos lógicos. This paper attempts to demonstrate that in Emmanuel Lévinas' thinking, justice is the necessary opening - and dissolution- of the "I" which makes fecundity - procreation - possible, and that in that same measure makes possible that the Logos transforms into a "desire to say" and the world into a "among us". At the same time it wants to demonstrate that this notion ofjustice is directly related to the ideas of expression and nudity. Due to which the "Other" imposes itself in front of the "same", as man, singular and vulnerable, and that in the same measure it is linked to the notion of the Face and its particular mode of manifestation. In this respect, we propose that justice. As long as necessary condition, can fund an ethically constituted world, where an "erotic order" mandates over logic orderings. (shrink)

The myth of judgment in the final pages of Plato’s Gorgias has left more than one of its readers puzzled, a standpoint that is especially true in regards of the way that the punishment reserved to the unjust souls in Hades has been interpreted. In this paper, we shall see that the specific function of the punishment in the final myth of Plato’s Gorgias is to offer a metaphor of the effects of refutation upon the soul. For such a claim, (...) we intend to show that punishment itself is modelled by means of an analogy with medicine which structures the Dialogue as a whole. After we have observed how Socrates introduce this analogy inside the myth by using nudity as a criterion of the evaluation of the soul, we shall analyze how the punishment itself is characterized. In the end, if we can assert that punishment reflects the use of refutation, it is because the pain it causes is analogous to the shame that one who disposes of the wrong beliefs experiences after being refuted. (shrink)

This essay discusses the work of two female theatre-makers, and their strategic use of nudity on stage. The author appropriates signs of indignation in this work in order to re-visit the ‘problem’ of the female form being traditionally associated with bodily immanence rather than transcendence. Both Nic Green's Trilogy (2009–2010) and Ursula Martinez’ My Stories, Your Emails (2010) use the naked female form to proffer statements about the experience of being a woman in the 2000s. Their use of (...) class='Hi'>nudity breaks with feminist theories popular in the 1990s, which argued that because the female form could never escape the symbolic logic of phallocentrism, it could never escape sexual objectification, and thus should operate on the margins of mainstream culture, cultivate agency by appropriating the means of production and be removed from view (radical negativity). By identifying as ‘artists’ and by insisting on their right to put their experience centre stage, Green and Martinez break with the anti-humanist theories of the 1990s and proffer a more individualistic strain of feminist performance. The author celebrates this work as a break away from the deadlock offered by theories of radical negativity. (shrink)

The undraped human form is ubiquitous in Western art and even appears in the art of India and Japan. Only in China, François Jullien argues, is the nude completely absent. In this enthralling extended essay, he explores the different conceptions of the human body that underlie this provocative disparity. Contrasting nakedness with nudity, Jullien explores the traditional European vision of the nude as a fixed point of fusion where form joins truth. He then shows that the absence of the (...) nude in Chinese art evinces an understanding of the human body as changeable and transitory. Viewed in light of each other, these differing concepts allow for a new way of thinking about form, the ideal, and beauty, enabling us to delve deeper into the relationship between art and the ideas that lie at its roots. Beautifully illustrated and gracefully translated into English for the first time, _The Impossible Nude_ will fascinate anyone interested in art history, Chinese art, or aesthetics. (shrink)

Ancient Greek visual representations of the recovery of Helen by Menelaos are generally thought to depend closely on two distinct poetic sources. This paper argues that this belief is untenable. The principal theoretical assumption underlying it, that there will always be a close fit between ancient Greek poetic and artistic representations of a given story, is not the only conceivable relationship between poetry and art in Archaic and Early Classical Greece. The empirical evidence advanced to support the belief, the occurrence (...) of similar motifs in both the poetic sources and the visual representations, is strained: scholars have read into the pictures motifs or intentions, including nudity and seduction, that are known from literature but have not been given unambiguous visual form in the pictures. This paper argues that the relationship between the artistic and literary representations of the recovery of Helen is much more distant and less direct than most scholars have thought. The same general story underlies all the pictorial representations of the subject in the Archaic and Early Classical periods, but no specific poetic source was necessarily behind the story circulating among the artists. This study draws attention, in particular, to methods of storytelling that are unique to the visual arts. It addresses in detail one of the most striking and problematic aspects of the iconography of the recovery of Helen, the variety of physical settings of the event, and argues that the pictorial elements of setting provide important narrative information that verbal narratives would convey in a different way. (shrink)

Dans cet ouvrage directement tiré de sa thèse intitulée « Female Public Nudity in Belle Époque Paris » et soutenue en 2006 à l’université de Floride, Lela F. Kerley retrace et interroge le processus conflictuel qui a accompagné la normalisation de l’exhibition publique de la nudité féminine à Paris entre 1889 et 1914 sous l’effet d’expérimentations artistiques et de la prolifération du nu féminin dans le répertoire des music-halls. L’enquête s’intéresse aussi bien aux pratiques et motivations...

This article examines the social and symbolic aspects of female performers’ nudity in Parisian café-concert at the end of the nineteenth century. The study of this scenic phenomenon is based on the example of Le Coucher d’Yvette [Bedtime for Yvette], whose popularity, renewed by numerous imitations, prefigures the later vogue of the effeuillage genre [striptease] in the programming of Parisian shows in the twentieth century. The analysis draws on manuscripts of effeuillage shows preserved in stage censorship archives, as well (...) as on iconographic sources and various discourses revealing the contemporary reception of female stripping on stage. It thus sheds light on the craze generated by the eroticization of this gesture and the impact of this reception on the history of the body and gender in that period. (shrink)

This book takes a new approach to the question, "Is the philosopher to be seen as universal human being or as eccentric?". Through a reading of the Theaetetus,Pappas first considers how we identify philosophers - how do they appear, in particular how do they dress? The book moves to modern philosophical treatments of fashion, and of "anti-fashion". He argues that aspects of the fashion/anti-fashion debate apply to antiquity, indeed that nudity at the gymnasia was an anti-fashion. Thus anti-fashion provides (...) a way of viewing ancient philosophy's orientation toward a social world in which, for all its true existence elsewhere, philosophy also has to live. (shrink)

This article engages Agamben’s view that philosophy and poetry need to remarry, to heal a fracture that springs from the origin of Western culture between knowing and having the (inaccessible) object. While Agamben would like philosophy to wax more poetic (to have the object) and poetry to show more awareness of its philosophical implications (to know the object), he also encourages direct interventions between these two arenas. This essay thus stages an interpenetration of poetic writing and philosophy (Agamben with a (...) little Derrida). James’s embodiment of Agamben’s theory of melancholia in The Aspern Papers set alongside Brodsky’s reflection of Agamben’s notions of nudity, the specter, and the messianic in Watermark—in relation to depictions of Venice—leads to the realization that Agamben’s messianic renders melancholia inoperative. Agamben’s messianic vision that finds salvation in loss cancels the desirability of clinging to the lost object by showing the redemption of its passage. (shrink)

The metaphor of mapping is used in this paper to examine the discursive construction of women whose nudity in public places (making a spectacle of herself) provides dilemmas for community mental health nurses required to make assessments of these women's ability to function in die community. Excerpts from stories provided by die nurses are used to demonstrate the complexity of die decision‐making processes and the limits to die choices they perceive they can make.

This book seeks to restore Homer to his rightful place among the principal figures in the history of political and moral philosophy. Through this fresh and provocative analysis of the Iliad and the Odyssey, Peter J. Ahrensdorf examines Homer's understanding of the best life, the nature of the divine, and the nature of human excellence. According to Ahrensdorf, Homer teaches that human greatness eclipses that of the gods, that the contemplative and compassionate singer ultimately surpasses the heroic warrior in grandeur, (...) and that it is the courageously questioning Achilles, not the loyal Hector or even the wily Odysseus, who comes closest to the humane wisdom of Homer himself. Thanks to Homer, two of the distinctive features of Greek civilization are its extraordinary celebration of human excellence, as can be seen in Greek athletics, sculpture, and nudity, and its singular questioning of the divine, as can be seen in Greek philosophy. (shrink)

The combination of sex and horror may be disquieting to many, but the two are natural (if perhaps gruesome) bedfellows. In fact, sex and horror coincide with such regularity in contemporary horror fiction that the two concepts appear to be at least partially intertwined. The sex–horror relationship is sometimes connotative rather than overt; examples of this relationship range from the seduction overtones of 'Nosferatu' and the juxtaposition of nudity and horror promised by European exploitation filmmakers to the sadomasochistic iconography (...) of 'Hellraiser'. In other cases, sex and horror are balanced in a manner that thoroughly blurs the distinction between porn and horror. The sustained presence of sex-horror in film suggests that these two elements fit together and the combination is a source of pleasure (entertainment, fascination, intellectual stimulation and so forth) for many. Yet sex-horror is broadly perceived to be disturbing and these negative reactions indicate that sex-horror is a source of trepidation, moral disdain or disgust for some. Thus, it appears that sex-horror inspires directly competing responses. One might conclude that sex-horror itself is paradoxical; that it holds two directly oppositional meanings simultaneously. However, as I will illustrate in this chapter, these dual responses are not as contradictory as they might first appear to be. (shrink)

‘Religion and corporeality’. At first sight, the coordinating conjunction «and» sounds rather odd here because in the vision of many people spirituality and materiality necessarily exclude each other. Still, many scholars have offered abundant evidence that Christianity is a religion of embodiment. Yet, as will become clear from the works of the theologians Erik Peterson and André Guindon, the turn toward the body within Christianity is primarily a turn toward a clothed body. This may explain why the Italian philosopher Giorgio (...) Agamben has argued that our culture, which is heavily influenced by Christian theology, is characterized by the impossibility of nakedness. In his view, we should try to think a possible nakedness of man by liberating it, piece by piece, from the theological fabric which is wrapped around it. The question that I want to raise here is whether such a naked nudity is really a human option. Drawing on Pope John Paul II’s Theology of the Body and introducing the notion of corporeal vulnerability, I will argue that it is not. (shrink)

The Punishment of Dirce was a theme that intrigued both artists and patrons of the Roman period. It appeared in diverse locations and media, notably as a wall painting in the House of the Vettii in Pompeii and the Toro Farnese once displayed in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. In all representations, Dirce struggles with the bull that will trample her to death. Traditional studies of this imagery have focused on the formal characteristics of these representations, studying issues of (...) workshop practice and the relationship between originals and copies. Scholars seldom analyze the meaning of the myth in depth. While most studies note that Dirce often appears in the guise of a maenad, they dismiss this observation. Additionally, it is rarely noted that Dirce's semi-nudity has any role in this story. In fact, her nudity is highly significant, for it was not part of the literary accounts. This study offers a fresh interpretation of Dirce's punishment considering the function of gender. Using literary sources such as Euripides, Plautus, Lucian, and Petronius, as well as visual images in a variety of media including wall painting, sculpture, gems, medals, and lamps, it is argued that artists and patrons combined maenadism and nudity to portray Dirce as a specifically female social transgressor. As a semi-nude maenad, the queen abandons accepted female decorum. These attributes allow the viewer readily to identify Dirce as guilty of hubris against family and society. (shrink)

In this paper, the ethics of otherness of Emmanuel Levinas, for whom the nudity of the Face (visage) is never a matter of style but moral conscience, encounters the theory of (cultural) dialogical action, foundation for Paulo Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and its denunciation-enunciation of dehumanization and oppression. For both authors, violence gets the meaning of possession, way throughout an entity, although existing, is partially negated. Such partiality, when negating the independence of the entity, states oppression, as it (...) negates the oppressed vocation to be more. Oppression kills life. Whereas, it is through the conscience of such condition of beingfor-other that the proper possibility of humanity can be thought, because the relation to the other or to the collective is our relation, irreducible to understanding. To recognize such subversion, therefore, is to recognize that as the oppressed free themselves, they avoid to get back to an oppressive regime. In doing so, they free their prior oppressors, they inaugurate love. Is it not to assume, in essence, that ethics is a construction of sense of life since the encounter with the Other? KEY WORDS – Humanism. Freedom. Ethics of otherness. Pedagogy of the oppressed. Social transformation. (shrink)

To explore utopian fashion using a case study of those who have cast off clothes might seem like a deliberately perverse enterprise. The practice of nudism may first appear to be an immaterial culture, a dress study without an object. And yet, as John Berger has so pithily put it in Ways of Seeing, "Nudity is a form of dress."1 Being naked is never without cultural signification, deeply rooted in social and material specificities. In Seeing Through Clothes, dress historian (...) Anne Hollander has emphasized that "the state of undress" has "a constant share" in "the profound and complicated motives governing all types of dress." She asserts, "The more significant clothing is, the more meaning attaches to its absence, and... (shrink)

It often surprises modern readers to find the cerebral philosopher Socrates hanging out in gymnasia and wrestling schools. We tend to downplay Socrates’ association with athletes and contest as mere literary window-dressing. I would like to suggest, to the contrary, that Plato’s depiction of Socrates as an athlete goes beyond dramatic setting and linguistic metaphor. Plato actually presents Socrates as an athlete of the soul, engaged in intellectual contest, occasionally defeating his opponents, and coaching young protégées toward victory in the (...) struggle for aretē. Socratic dialogue is itself an agōn. Sometimes it is aimed at defeating famous opponents such as Euthyphro, Euthydemus, Gorgias, or Protagoras. By refuting these challengers, Socrates elicits shame—a benevolent shame “in service of the god” that serves as a starting point to re-launch and redirect the investigation. At other times Socratic dialogue tests personal beliefs about virtue, amounting to a revelation and examination of the soul that corresponds to gymnastic nudity and competition. In every case Socratic contest aims to serve the greatest agōn: the struggle to be good. Socrates appropriates the competitive spirit (philonikia) he finds in his comrades, and he directs it beyond the relativistic goal of defeating ones opponent towards the idealistic goals of education, virtue, and wisdom. In this way he transforms philonikia into philosophia. Socrates’ approach to and engagement in agōn not only connects the worlds of philosophy and athletics, it serves as a model for how athletic agōn can be put in the service of psychic as well as physical virtue. (shrink)

Dozens of records attest to the fact that during the mid-seventeenth century politicized public nudity or “going naked as a sign” as it was known to early modernsubjects proliferated. This practice captured so much popular attention that Sir Charles Sedley along with other royalist libertines notoriously stripped in front of 1,000 spectators in 1663 and delivered a mock sermon in a grotesque parody of religious sectarians. I examine Quaker approaches to signification, focusing on their deployment of incarnational signs to (...) advance a revolutionary challenge to the empty reified signs of a burgeoning secular and commercial culture. Although both men and women went naked as a sign, the creative potential of women’s bodies, I argue, constituted a doubly-threatening specter to observers. In the midst of a period that witnessed what James Holstun has characterized as “the sundering of human life from providential history,” women openly exposed their bodies in order to visually underscore their creative potential and to call attention to the sacred and incalculable promise of life itself. (shrink)

This dissertation addresses the roots of fundamental changes in twentieth-century art in China by addressing how the cultural exchange between Europe and China transformed critical conceptions and artistic practices in the field of art. The translation of German aesthetic theories and the French academic training of Chinese artists engendered the conceptual and technical transformation of Chinese art in the early twentieth century. While the notions of pure nudity, artistic salvation, and archaeology of art were introduced from German philosophy into (...) Chinese art, the traditional ideas of art versus craft and artist as moral exemplars were converted. Chinese intellectuals analogized crisis-ridden China in the early 20th century to Germany being occupied by the Napoleon army in 1806. They believed that the superior academic culture, instead of its political and military strengths, was the foundation of the unification of Germany in 1871. The doctrines of German scholars were therefore introduced to China through German-trained Chinese intellectuals, aiming at achieving the modern transition of Chinese society. The implementation of aesthetic education based on German philosophical theories endowed modern artists and their works with the social mission to shape the citizens’ personalities and improve their tastes to establish a liberal and civilized modern Chinese society. Moreover, due to the establishment of the Institut Franco-Chinois in Lyon, more Chinese art students acquired the opportunity to study in Paris, the most important center for new artistic ideas and practices during the early twentieth century. Thus, the conceptual shift in the field of aesthetics was expressed through artists with a French academic training background. This study focuses on examining how the translation of German aesthetic doctrines and the introduction of French (sometimes Italian) artistic techniques contributed to the modern transition of Chinese art. How were German aesthetics translated and disseminated to young Chinese artists in the early twentieth century? How were the German scholars’ theories appropriated to establish new standards for evaluating artists and their works? What were the mechanisms, obstacles and cultural clashes encountered by European-trained Chinese artists in their training and creation processes? How did European-trained Chinese artists respond to these new modern aesthetic doctrines? Each of the five chapters of my dissertation centers on the introduction or transformation of an artistic concept: art versus craft, pure nudity, artistic salvation, and archaeology of art, discussing how these concepts were theoretically and practically formulated in Chinese art. (shrink)