ISBN : 9780198716778
The body is a rich object for aesthetic inquiry. We aesthetically assess both our own bodies and those of others, and our felt bodily experiences-as we eat, have sex, and engage in other everyday activities-have aesthetic qualities. The body, whether depicted or actively performing, features centrally in aesthetic experiences of visual art, theatre, dance and sports. Body aesthetics can be a source of delight for both the subject and the object of the gaze. But aesthetic consideration of bodies also raises acute ethical questions: the body is deeply intertwined with one's identity and sense of self, and aesthetic assessment of bodies can perpetuate oppression based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, size, and disability. Artistic and media representations shape how we see and engage with bodies, with consequences both personal and political. This volume contains sixteen original essays by contributors in philosophy, sociology, dance, disability theory, critical race studies, feminist theory, medicine, and law. Contributors take on bodily beauty, sexual attractiveness, the role of images in power relations, the distinct aesthetics of disabled bodies, the construction of national identity, the creation of compassion through bodily presence, the role of bodily style in moral comportment, and the somatic aesthetics of racialized police violence.
Sherri Irvin: Introduction: Why Body Aesthetics?
I: Representation
1 Maria del Guadalupe Davidson: Black Silhouettes on White Walls: Kara Walker's Magic Lantern
2 A. W. Eaton: Bodily Taste and Fat Oppression
3 C. Winter Han: From 'Little Brown Brothers' to 'Queer Asian Wives': Constructing the Asian Male Body
II: Look
4 Deborah L. Rhode: Appearance as a Feminist Issue
5 Shirley Anne Tate: A Tale of Two Olympians--Beauty, 'Race,' Nation
6 Glenn Parsons: The Merrickites
7 Stephen Davies: And Everything Nice
III: Performance
8 Tobin Siebers: In/Visible: Disabled Bodies on the Stage
9 Jill Sigman: Live, Body-Based Performance: An Account from the Field
10 Barbara Gail Montero: Aesthetic Effortlessness
11 Peg Brand Weiser and Edward B. Weiser: Misleading Aesthetic Norms of Beauty: Perceptual Sexism in Elite Women's Sports
IV: Practice
12 Yuriko Saito: Body Aesthetics and the Cultivation of Moral Virtues
13 George Yancy: White Embodied Gazing, the Black Body as Disgust, and the Aesthetics of Un- Suturing
14 Richard Shusterman: Somaesthetics and the Fine Art of Eating
15 Ann J. Cahill: Sexual Desire, Inequality, and the Possibility of Transformation
16 Sheila Lintott and Sherri Irvin: Sex Objects and Sexy Subjects: A Feminist Reclamation of Sexiness