Body: The Aesthetic And The Pragmatic

Body, which occupied an awkward position in the pre-modern philosophy history, was repressed and guarded against by Philosophy of Consciousness. Since the rise of post-modern philosophy, body has gradually turned into a discursive centre, attracting a lot of attention. However, instead of improving its situation in consumer society, body is changed into a major alienated object.In Aesthetics, the perceptual form of body has been accompanied by the establishment of the subject of Aesthetics. However, it is also an important resource of opposing and resisting the alienation of body for Aesthetics. The rising of mass culture is the realistic context for the emergence of "Body Aesthetics". The position of body and its signifying form has experienced major transformations since the conception of "Body Aesthetics" was put forward by Shusterman, who exerted great efforts in establishing it as a new subject. The strong pragmatistic philosophical tendency of this conception, on one hand, facilitates its involving in some mass cultural phenomena; on the other hand, it shows its over-optimistic theoretical appeal. "Body Aesthetics" left behind many theoretical regrets, especially in dealing with the problem of the alienation of body.Mass culture is a kind of consumer culture. In the context of consumer society, the significance of "Body Aesthetics" is greatly reduced, for the body is shaded and neglected by the envelopment of consumer culture in the perspective of class, gender, nation and labor etc. This thesis tries to explicate the significance of "Body Aesthetics" from some important aspects, including the materialization in mass culture, the resistance and temptation of the body etc. In the context of consumer society, these meaning forms of "Body Aesthetics" are more or less impaired by consumerism, which implies the inevitable dilemma. The crisis of "Body Aesthetics" lies in its partiality of meaning. Apparently a return to the totality could restore the complex implication and the resisting energy of body. However, this appeal has a strong Utopian significance in the post-modern cultural background.