Manuela Fraire
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816675784
- eISBN:
- 9781452946337
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816675784.003.0002
- Subject:
- Art, Visual Culture
This chapter argues that accessorizing the bare body turns it from a meager transient thing into a subject and object of desire “created” by the laws of culture and language and quite unlike any ...
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This chapter argues that accessorizing the bare body turns it from a meager transient thing into a subject and object of desire “created” by the laws of culture and language and quite unlike any other thing “created” by humans. The act of clothing ourselves, and especially the choice of accessories, resembles the endless quest for identity that enables our “I” to engage in its work of self-construction, its search for an ideal image and for a legible identity that can actually be recognized by the Other. Because of its function in the construction and recognition of identity, the accessory is the signature/mark of a subject doomed to incompleteness, but never quite resigned to it.Less
This chapter argues that accessorizing the bare body turns it from a meager transient thing into a subject and object of desire “created” by the laws of culture and language and quite unlike any other thing “created” by humans. The act of clothing ourselves, and especially the choice of accessories, resembles the endless quest for identity that enables our “I” to engage in its work of self-construction, its search for an ideal image and for a legible identity that can actually be recognized by the Other. Because of its function in the construction and recognition of identity, the accessory is the signature/mark of a subject doomed to incompleteness, but never quite resigned to it.
