Philosophical Perspectives on Fashion by Giovanni Matteucci Stefano Marino

Author:Giovanni Matteucci,Stefano Marino
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781474237482
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2016-08-02T16:00:00+00:00

3. Theoretical appendix: On somaesthetics

While most philosophers are probably unfamiliar with the crucial fashion function of the fit model, most devotees of fashion are likely unacquainted with the relatively new concept of somaesthetics. Here is a brief explanation. Somaesthetics is an interdisciplinary field of research, rooted in philosophical theory, but offering an integrative conceptual framework and a menu of methodologies not only for better understanding our somatic experience, but also for improving the quality of our bodily perception, performance, and presentation. It is based on the premise that such heightened somatic awareness and mastery offers significant benefits for many aspects of life, including the diverse arts of design (among which fashion finds its place). Somaesthetics emerged from pragmatist aesthetics and from the idea of philosophy as an art of living. Once we recognize the central role of the body (as a living, sentient, perceiving, dynamic soma) in the creation and appreciation of art, then it is logical to explore how we can improve our use of the body or soma to enhance our artistic capacities and pleasures. Not only art’s creation and appreciation would be enhanced through this heightening of somatic consciousness, but also the attractive shaping of our lives as an art of living could be enriched by greater perceptual awareness of aesthetic meanings, feelings, and potentials in our everyday conduct of life. Moreover, if we take seriously the idea of the art of living, then, since we live through the soma (not only physically but also emotionally and perceptually), it makes sense to improve the medium of our lives through careful, critical somatic attention and amelioration.

Somasthetics is thus devoted to the critical study and meliorative cultivation of the experience and use of the living body (or soma) as a site of sensory appreciation (aesthesis) and creative self-stylization. An ameliorative discipline of both theory and practice, somaesthetics seeks to enrich not only our discursive knowledge of the body but also our lived somatic experience and performance; it aims to improve the meaning, understanding, efficacy, and beauty of our movements and of the environments to which our actions contribute and from which they also derive their energies and significance. To pursue these aims, somaesthetics is concerned with a wide diversity of knowledge forms, discourses, social practices and institutions, cultural traditions and values, and bodily disciplines that structure (or could improve) such somatic understanding and cultivation. It is therefore an interdisciplinary project, in which theory and practice are closely connected and reciprocally nourish each other. It is not limited to one theoretical field, academic or professional vocabulary, cultural ideology, or particular set of bodily disciplines. Rather it aims to provide an overarching theoretical structure and a set of basic and versatile conceptual tools to enable a more fruitful interaction and integration of the very diverse forms of somatic knowledge currently being practiced and pursued.

There is an impressive, even overwhelming abundance of discourse about the body in many disciplines of contemporary theory and commercial enterprise. But such somatic discourse typically lacks two important features.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.