Ian King

This book explores the relationships between how the body appears and feels in everyday life through aesthetics. The recent shift away from Kantian aesthetics towards a more enacted route places at its core the realization that the world is experienced as possibilities for action, and critical to this understanding is how the body’s movement generates multiple pre-linguistic experiences and meaning. This route therefore realizes the importance of the body’s role in working in conjunction with cognition in generating these experiences. Nevertheless, this attention has predominantly focused on how the body ‘feels’ through engagement, rather than how it appears. This might be problematic as it is essential to appreciate that the body is not naked in everyday life, and therefore through dress we look to restore the balance between appearance and feel. We ‘dress’ our bodies to communicate – to express our confidence (or not), identity, status, aspirations, affiliations etc. We dress according to the situation/audience etc. It might be to attract attention, to protect or to hide the body. It might be to accentuate height, or religious belief, or simply to shock or conform. Essentially, it is not simply clothing that we wear that achieves this – for example, hair, makeup, jewellery, handbags, shoes, piercings, tattoos – cumulatively these constitute how we ‘dress’ our bodies. Thus, the appearance (as well as the feel) of the body is significant if we are to appreciate an enacted approach to aesthetics.

I will argue here that for many of us the act of dressing our bodies is evidence of intentional expression before different audiences. It is important to appreciate that intentionality enables us to understand how and why we act the way we do. The novel (and potentially significant) contribution this paper makes to this examination is employing clothing as a means of revealing the characteristics of intentionality. In that, it is rare to identify one exemplar that successfully captures the relationships between the cognitive and physical characteristics of its application. Nevertheless, this paper will not attempt to fully encompass the traditional approaches associated with this concept but instead employ both the early and later writings of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau‑Ponty and his claim that our lived bodies are an expressive space from which we act intentionally. In other words (and this is critical for the approach of this paper), that the manner by which we dress our bodies is likely to offer a significant means of revealing the character of intentionality in everyday life and by this, claim that clothing can communicate. Accordingly, this first‑person account closely examines both the cognitive and physical experience of a simple clothing example: ‘what to wear?’ and the experience of an everyday clothing purchase in a store and its subsequent impact when the item of clothing is worn for different audiences. The ensuing discussion systematically examines the significance of marrying Merleau‑Ponty’s writings with this everyday example through private and public audiences and in abstract and public spaces.

This chapter devotes itself to exploring the richness and potential of expression. However, rather than follow the more familiar route of language, we will here explore bodily expression. I will suggest that our bodies, our facility for movement, together with the clothes we wear, provide rich potential in understanding the nature of expression in people-based contexts. The approach I take draws heavily from phenomenology and in particular from the ideas and writings of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty

I will argue here that for many of us the act of dressing our bodies is evidence of intentional expression before different audiences. It is important to appreciate that intentionality enables us to understand how and why we act the way we do. The novel contribution this paper makes to this examination is employing clothing as a means of revealing the characteristics of intentionality. In that, it is rare to identify one exemplar that successfully captures the relationships between the cognitive and physical characteristics of its application. Nevertheless, this paper will not attempt to fully encompass the traditional approaches associated with this concept but instead employ both the early and later writings of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau‑Ponty and his claim that our lived bodies are an expressive space from which we act intentionally. In other words, that the manner by which we dress our bodies is likely to offer a significant means of revealing the character of intentionality in everyday life and by this, claim that clothing can communicate. Accordingly, this first‑person account closely examines both the cognitive and physical experience of a simple clothing example: ‘what to wear?’ and the experience of an everyday clothing purchase in a store and its subsequent impact when the item of clothing is worn for different audiences. The ensuing discussion systematically examines the significance of marrying Merleau‑Ponty’s writings with this everyday example through private and public audiences and in abstract and public spaces