Review: 'Body Aesthetics

Perception of Beauty, 2017

In many religious circles and philosophies of life, the human body is excluded from the realm of spirituality and meaning. Due to a dualistic approach, nudity is viewed as merely a physical and corporeal category. In social media, there is the real danger that the naked human body is exploited for commercial gain. Advertisements often leave the impression that the body, very specifically the genitals, is designed merely for physical desire and corporeal chemistry. They become easily objects for lust, excluded from the beauty of graceful existence and noble courage. It is argued that the naked human body is not designed for pornographic exploitation and promiscuous sensuality but for compassionate intimacy and nurturing care in order to instil a humane dimension in human and sexual encounters. In this regard, antiquity and the Michelangelesque perspective can contribute to a paradigm shift from abusive exploitation to the beauty of vulnerable sensitivity. In order to foster an integrative approach to theory formation in anthropology, the methodology of stereometric thinking is proposed.

2011

This article provides a historical overview of attempts within anthropological enquiry to theorize "the body" as a component of visual culture. It charts a paradigm shift from an observationist view of behavior to a conception of the body as a somatic and sensory resource for dynamically embodied action in cultural space/time. I argue that to understand the human body as a bio-cultural resource for the dynamic construction of self, personhood and identity, and as a means for creative expression as well as more mundane skilled embodied practices, requires theorizing across the usual disciplinary boundaries between biological and social being.

2022

Note: This syllabus is suitable for a graduate course or honors/upper level undergraduate seminar. DESCRIPTION - This course provides an in-depth introduction to historical and contemporary understandings of the body and embodiment in society. Drawing on a broad range of interdisciplinary literature and theoretical traditions from the social sciences, human geography, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy and the humanities, this course explores the symbolic and material horizons along and out of which bodies fashion—and are fashioned by—worlds, myth, societies, and selves. Part I of the course considers the cosmological and organizing principles of the body in myth and enlightenment thinking, bringing each into conversation with understandings of the body in early sociology. Part II introduces the phenomenological, post-structural, postmodern, and cultural theoretical perspectives vital to the “bodily turn” and thematization of the body in social thought that occurred in the late 20th century. Part III examines body and embodiment in relation to issues of identity, place, and the boundaries of the embodied self. Topics from this section include sex, gender, race, and class; health, medicine, ageing and the life course; and posthumanism. Part IV attends to the public-facing social body, exploring the body at worship and play, the body that witnesses and protests, and the aesthetic politics embodied in art and the built environment.

2009

Thanks to critical scholars we have come to discover the cul­-<br> tural underpinnings of our bodies in our societies. Indeed many have shown <br> how the representation of the body is a means of status and control of<br> gender and ethnicity and of nature and culture. Thus body politics is an­<br> chored in the most basic experiences of being in a body.<br> The present study will strive to understand and trace how body has been<br> thought of down the ages. We shall mainly focus our reflection on the<br> western tradition. Next, we shall attempt to propose a possible rehabilita­-<br> tion of our bodily life with a special attention to the somatic theology of <br> St. Paul.<br> Our study reveals that our social conditionings determine our perception<br> of our body. The privileging of the racist white body, the consumerist fit<br> body, strong male body, sattvic bhramanical body, and the rational body<br> ...

2011

Conference at the GHI, October 14–16, 2010. Conveners: Hartmut Bergho! (GHI) and Thomas Kühne (Clark University, Worcester). Participants: Ingrid Banks (University of California, Santa Barbara), Christina Burr (University of Windsor), Paula Diehl (Humboldt University, Berlin), Jennifer Evans (Carleton University, Ottawa), Mila Ganeva (Miami University, Oxford), Erik Jensen (Miami University, Oxford), Geo! rey Jones (Harvard Business School), Karin Klenke in absentia (University of Göttingen), Sara Lenehan (Oxford University), Jan Logemann (GHI), Michael Müller in absentia (Technical University Dortmund), Henry Navarro (University of Cincinnati), Uta Poiger (University of Washington, Seattle), Véronique Pouillard (Free University of Brussels), Christiane Reichart-Burikukuiye (University of Bayreuth), Miriam Rürup (GHI), Anne Sonnenmoser (University of Duisburg-Essen), Uwe Spiekermann (GHI), Mark Stoneman (GHI), Althea Tait (Old Dominion University, Norfolk), Ulrike Thoms (Charité Cli...

2000

The essay aims to think the existence of an ugly body as a curricular insurrection against the embellishing capitalistic strategies and take bets on the possibility of questioning the beauty. Despite of an organizational curriculum policy that praises the aseptic, pretty and seducing body, this writing proposes to think the body beyond the aesthetics capitalistic enslavement. If it is an aesthetic imperative, the body mocks on ugliness.

This book is about representations of the body in all fields (fine art, medicine, ethnography, racial studies, biology). It is intended for artists, art students, and people interested in theories of art. This is the 2021 revision. Every couple of years I rewrite and update this book. The original was published by Stanford University Press in 1999 and is now out of print. This revision (the third "edition") includes examples from contemporary art, and assignments for classroom use. All comments & questions are welcome!

1993

This article intends to look at de-stereotyping Indian sculpted and painted bodies from two different angles: one, from the angle of creation and the other from consumption/appreciation. It is necessary to clarify from the outset that by de-stereotyping I do not only mean departing from the norms of beauty but also departing from our normal understanding of beauty that has a history and to consider both the human body and its representation in all its materiality with a historical perspective. With reference to sculpted bodies of ancient India and our modern historiography of the same, I would point out how our present understanding formed through several discourses has typified these works of art, bringing into play a second order of typicality, that forms our present understanding not only of representative human bodies but of the real human body too. It is important, I argue to question some of our understanding of the patron client relation of the past and reconsider the questions of (male) gaze and desire vis-à-vis female gaze.