Ramones clothing
(What he actually does with this insight, we're not sure, as we didn't read the rest of this typically difficult essay.) Shahidha's book reflects on this alienation from ourselves that Derrida has pointed out here. But in that moment of being naked before the naked animal, free from social expectations, Derrida thinks one's philosophy should be radically re-oriented, that we should recognize deep down that despite our pretensions, we're animals, not souls set into bodies. It requires a notion of shame and an identification of oneself as distinct from some animal that runs around without clothes or shame. In an obvious sense, the cat is also naked, but really, nakedness requires a contrast with being clothed. We previously read Simone De Beauvoir in the "Social Life" chapter of The Second Sex talk about how clothing is used to control women, but the concern of our selection from Shahidha's book and of these other readings she selected for us (which are all footnotes in Dressed) is largely clothing's liberatory aspect.ĭerrida reflects on the experience of being naked and seeing how his cat is looking at him. To wear clothes (says Shahidha) is to be linked to a society, in the ways Adam Smith described (how many hands went into providing their components, design, manufacture, and distribution?) and to be part of cultural tropes and traditions (in some ways a language), to participate in a social order that places limits on what may be worn, when and where, and by whom, and to have a certain relation to nature (especially interesting if you're wearing animal skin or fur).
The "face we put forward" doesn't just express or reflect some idea of ourselves but contributes to making those "selves" a reality. How we dress is part of how we act, and it's the sum of those actions that makes our character. Even though our dominant metaphysics has changed, this prejudice continues. Much historical philosophy takes appearance to be the mere covering to be ignored in favor of the soul, essence or content beneath. 1–16, Michel Foucault's "The Ethics of the Concern of the Self As A Practice of Freedom" (1984), and our guest Shahidha's book Dressed: A Philosophy of Clothes (2020) p. On Jacques Derrida's "The Animal That Therefore I Am" (1999) p. Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 53:41 - 49.2MB)