The Naked Subject: Nudity, Context and Sexualization in Contemporary Culture
Date
2003
Authors
Cover, R.
Editors
Advisors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Type:
Journal article
Citation
Body and Society, 2003; 9(3):53-72
Statement of Responsibility
Conference Name
Abstract
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'.