The naked person and/or naked body has been viewed as something asocial, abject, marginal, placed outside the bounds of the 'cultural', 'civilized', and even the law in the histories of many Western and Eastern cultures. Gradually throughout the 20th century, there was a major change in the attitude toward the human body, and the naked body in particular, in most of these societies.
The naked body 'broke through' into our lives, overcoming the barriers of permissibility and our attitudes – those economic, political, cultural, and ecological – toward it. Our perception of the naked body as a whole has altered dramatically, as has the body itself. At the same time, the specifically naked body continues to be a special marker that indicates the subject's relationship both to and with society. It would even be more accurate to speak not about the body being a marker, but about the body being a whole set of markers: social, gender, ideological, etc.
Figuratively speaking the Naked Body is a narrative which meaning has been constantly changing. That’s why we called it ‘a palimpsest’.
By the word 'palimpsestic', we are referring to the idea that the body should be viewed as a mutable space; that is, a space that can represent, carry, and express a variety of ideas and behaviours, all of which can be made subject to change (just as the palimpsest itself is a space upon which inscriptions and marks can be made, carried for a time, and then subsequently changed). This applies to whatever vantage or lens one chooses to view the body through-sociopolitics, socioeconomics, socio-culture, or socio-ecology, for example. The body reflects its interactions with its environments, material and ephemeral alike, and is in turn marked and therefore changed by said interactions.
Taking into account the complexity of the 'naked body' as a variegated phenomenon, “Corpus Mundi” journal plans to publish a special issue devoted to the “naked body” in 2022.
This special issue is aimed at exploring a very wide range of different topics including, but not limited to: the concepts of “nudity”, “nakedness”, the absence of clothing or that part of clothing that is considered obligatory among the mainstream part of society. Other areas of interest may also include:
- The Naked Body: Historical Perspectives;
- Natural (naked) vs. civilized (clothed);
- The eroticization, vilification, and/or sacralization of the naked body;
- Nudity: shame vs freedom;
- Nudity: marker of acceleration/primitivism;
- The Naked Body: marker of health/decline;
- The Naked Body: marker of technology, the past, and the future;
- The Palimpsestic Naked Body;
- Nudity and the Gaze;
- Naked Alien: ontologies and existentialisms of the naked body;
- The Naked Body and National Culture: Models of Perception;
- Nudity as a recreational practice;
- The Naked Body as a ritual act, rites of passage;
- The Naked Body as a Tool: Actionism, Ideological and Power Practices,
- The Naked Body in Pop Culture;
- The Naked Body in art;
- In advertising;
- Allegories of the Naked Body;
- Nakedness vs. Nudity;
- The Naked Body and Counterculture;
- My Body, my choice;
- The Naked Body: Private vs Public;
- The Nakedness of Intimacy.
- The Naked Body as fashioned Industry
The issue is scheduled for release in March 2022.
Abstract submission deadline – November 20, 2021;
The deadline for articles is January 20, 2022.
Editors: Kwasu Tembo; Yakushenkova Olesya
Submissions are made through the Journal's website – https://corpusmundi.com/
If you have any questions, please contact the Editors corpusmundijournal@gmail.com