The Body as Medium: Fashion as Art

It might come as a surprise to talk about fashion in the context of Humanism and Posthumanism. Humanism you might think deals with the nature and essence of the human, while Posthumanism seeks to go beyond the boundaries of the human in order to improve or enhance its nature. Fashion, on the contrary, is about surface, as well as about covering the natural body and creating an image for its wearer. However, that is often seen as opposed to the human essence and nature. Let me explain why I think that fashion can tell us something important about human nature.

I would like to tell a short story of fashion that shows that fashion is as an essential human practice which might also have shaped what we consider to be human nature today. What I am going to tackle here is the issue of nature versus culture, and humanism versus posthumanism. My thesis is that this aesthetic practice belongs at the same time to and transcends human nature. Seen from a wider perspective, transcending human nature (the project of Posthumanism) belongs to human nature itself (which Humanism wants to describe).

An Evolutionary Perspective on Body Decoration and Clothing: The Evolution of the Aesthetic Sense

Under the force of sexual selection or during a global climate change (a dispute that is not...