Abstract
There are many dimensions to the established importance of skin; cultural, sensory and visual, to name but a few. Here I want to address that importance as fundamentally a material one, which rests on the intimacy of skin with another material surface—that of clothing. In her evolutionary history of skin, anthropologist Nina Jablonski positions skin as our “face to the world” (2006, p. 7). In lived experience, clothing, intervening between body and world, serves as that foremost face.1 Far from being secondary, as the vernacular metaphor of the “second skin”2 would imply, clothing is primary to embodied experience: since the body is always a clothed body,3 the lived ego is always already a clothed ego. To speak of skins and egos, then, is to speak of, on and through clothing.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Similar content being viewed by others
Bibliography
Anzieu, D., 1989 [1985]. The Skin Ego, trans. C. Turner. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Anzieu, D., and G. Tarrab, 1990 [1986]. A Skin for Thought: Interviews with Gilbert Tarrab on Psychology and Psychoanalysis, trans. D. N. Briggs. London: Karnac Books.
Bachelard, G., 1994 [1958]. The Poetics of Space, trans. M. Jolas, Foreword by J. R. Stilgoe. Boston: Beacon Press.
Bell, Q., 1976. On Human Finery. London: Hogarth Press.
Benaïm, L., 2005. “Azzedine Alaia and Yohji Yamamoto in conversation with Laurence Benaïm,” in A Magazine Curated by Yohji Yamamoto. Antwerp: A Publisher, pp. 44–7.
Bubble, S. (Susanna Lau), 2007. “Look At Me, Don’t Look At Me,” Style Bubble [blog]. Available from: http://stylebubble.typepad.com/style_bubble/2007/08/look-at-me-dont/comments/page/2/ — comments [Accessed November 18, 2009 ].
Cavallaro, D., and A. Warwick, 2001. Fashioning the Frame: Boundaries, Dress and the Body. Oxford: Berg.
Cendrars, B., 1975 [ 1924 ]. “Simultaneity (1924),” in The New Art of Color: The Writings of Sonia and Robert Delaunay, ed. A. Cohen, trans. D. Shapiro. New York: Viking, pp. 178–9.
DeLanda, M., 2004. Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy. London: Continuum.
Delaunay, R., 1975a [ 1938 ]. “The ‘Simultaneous’ Fabrics of Sonia Delaunay (Second Version) (1938),” in The New Art of Color: The Writings of Sonia
and Robert Delaunay, ed. A. Cohen, trans. D. Shapiro. New York: Viking, pp. 137–9.
Delaunay, S., 1975b [ 1931 ]. “Survey of Artists on the Future of Fashion (1931),” in The New Art of Color: The Writings of Sonia and Robert Delaunay, ed. A. Cohen, trans. D. Shapiro. New York: Viking, pp. 207–8.
Delaunay, S., 1975c [ 1967 ]. “Sonia Delaunay by Sonia Delaunay (1967),” in The New Art of Color: The Writings of Sonia and Robert Delaunay, ed. A. Cohen, trans. D. Shapiro. New York: Viking, pp. 194–7.
Dunseath, K. (ed.), 1998. A Second Skin: Women Write About Clothes. London: The Women’s Press.
Eliot, T. S., 2002 [ 1917 ]. “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” in Seven Centuries of Poetry in English, 4th edn, ed. J. Leonard. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, pp. 135–8.
Entwistle, J., 2007. “The Dressed Body,” in The Fashion Reader, eds L. Walters and A. Lillethun. Oxford: Berg, pp. 93–104.
Freud, S., 1986 [1923]. “The Ego and the Id,” in The Complete Edition of the Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud Volume XIX: “The Ego and the Id” and Other Works, ed. and trans. J. Strachey in collaboration with A. Freud. London: Hogarth Press, pp. 19–27.
Hanson, K., 1990. “Dressing Down Dressing Up: The Philosophic Fear of Fashion,” Hypatia, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 107–21.
Hiemenz, P., 1977. Principles of Colloid and Surface Chemistry. New York: Marcel Dekker.
Hollander, A., 1993. Seeing Through Clothes. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Jablonski, N., 2006. Skin: A Natural History. Berkeley: University of California Press.
MacKendrick, K., 2004. Word Made Skin: Figuring Language at the Surface of Flesh. New York: Fordham University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 1968 [1964]. The Visible and the Invisible, ed. C. Lefort, trans. A. Lingis. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 2002 [1945]. Phenomenology of Perception, trans. by C. Smith. Oxon: Routledge Classics.
Merleau-Ponty, M., 2008 [1948]. The World of Perception, trans. O. Davis, introduction by T. Baldwin. Oxon: Routledge Classics.
Onions, C. T., 1966. Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Storey, H., 1996. Fighting Fashion. London: Faber and Faber.
Taylor, M., 1997. Hiding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Valentine, H., and A. Thompson, 2002 [1938]. Better Than Beauty: A Guide to Charm. San Francisco: Chronicle.
Van der Zijpp, S., 2005. “Echoform: Autumn/Winter 1999, ” in Hussein Chalayan, exhibition catalogue, Groniger Museum, Gronigen, The Netherlands, 17 April–4 September, Rotterdam: Nai, p. 62.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2013 Stella North
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
North, S. (2013). The Surfacing of the Self: The Clothing-Ego. In: Cavanagh, S.L., Failler, A., Hurst, R.A.J. (eds) Skin, Culture and Psychoanalysis. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300041_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137300041_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-34941-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-30004-1
eBook Packages: Palgrave Media & Culture CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)