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List of contents
1. Meaning in Bodies and Adornment
2. Taking Adornment Seriously: Structuralism and Meaning
3. Details on the Gricean View
4. Deception in the Human and Animal Worlds (Imitation of Natural Meaning & Lying in Non-Natural Meaning)
5. Darwin on Animal Bodies
6. Human Sexual Selection
7. The Evolution of Bodily Adornment: Signaling and Meaning-Making in Prehistory
8. Information, Misperception, Suppression, Expression
9. On Beauty: Aesthetic Choices, Adornment, & Art
Notes
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Marilynn Johnson is Assistant Professor at the University of San Diego, USA.
Summary
How is meaning in our bodies constructed? To what extent is meaning in bodies innate, evolved through biological adaptations? To what extent is meaning in bodies culturally constructed? Does it change when we adorn ourselves in dress? In Adorning Bodies, Marilynn Johnson draws on evolutionary theory and philosophy in order to think about art, beauty, and aesthetics.
Considering meaning in bodies and bodily adornment, she explores how the ways we use our bodies are similar to — yet at other times different from — animals. Johnson engages with the work of evolutionary theorists, philosophers of language, and cultural theorists — Charles Darwin, H. P. Grice, and Roland Barthes respectively — to examine both natural and non-natural meanings. She addresses how both systems of meaning signify relevant information to other humans, with respect to both bodies and clothes. Johnson also demonstrates that how we dress could negatively influence the way our bodies can be read, and how some humans and animals use their bodies to deceive.
Foreword
Employs philosophy and evolutionary theory to illustrate how we think about bodies, adornment, and aesthetics.
Additional text
Marilynn Johnson's Adorning Bodies rigorously and insightfully brings together three disciplines rarely combined in a unified framework, namely, the philosophy of language, evolutionary theory, and aesthetics. Focusing on bodily adornment, Johnson is able to carefully dissect such issues, among others as the question of whether animals create art, while also arguing that some high fashion is art, properly so called. Written with exemplary clarity, the range of issues is broad with many engaging examples that establish that the philosophy of adornment is a vast understudied area calling for further, continuing inquiry and discussion.
