Abstract

VELAZQUEZ, María Eugenia. A bibliographic path through subject-society, body and clothing concepts and their interrelationships. Interdisciplinaria [online]. 2014, vol.31, n.2, pp.227-237. ISSN 1668-7027.

The objective of this essay was to perform a bibliographic exploration that engages sources from different social science disciplines, aiming to establish some of the connections that occurs between culture and body image's construction, and between the latter and clothing. Body and clothing are taken as object of study with the purpose of continuing the work already carried on in a previous paper (Velázquez, 2011). Although the preceding investigation takes the hypothesis that the dress would work as a metaphor for the personality and the connections the subject establishes with its immediate environment and society as a starting point, the traditional hypothetico - deductive method was not used. The social sciences, among which are included some of the disciplines that will be taken here as a reference, can be considered multi-paradigmatic. They are not regulated by a single theoretical paradigm as Kuhn (1971) praised, but instead they rely on multiple theories or logic-bubbles (de Bono, 1992) that achieve partial statements, or attempts at explanations, reduced to the portion of reality that each of them take as object of study. In this context, the multiple theories that coexist in social sciences overlap explanations, arise conceptual conflicts and let, most certainly, gaps and blind spots in the limits of their conceptions. It is therefore proposed, for the sake of scientific progress out of conflict and creativity, the search and creation of organizing concepts according to Saltalamacchia (1997). The articulation of theories from different disciplines, understood as overlapping metaphors that try to explain the same reality, enables the production of novel insights about the studied subject and the creation of new theories. Given the bibliographic research done, it can be visualized that subjectivity and society are in fact a network of relationships which effect on actual practice and daily life is structured by imaginary significations (Castoriadis, 1975) that configure the way we act and think. It can be also be stated that body and clothing can become a privileged observable for the study of the workings of this web of interrelationships. Therefore, studying the field in which clothing, inextricably related to the body, intervenes, and the ways in which it does, involves analyzing the discourses, practices and institutions that shape the representations of body, identity and society. Clothing, in its relation to the body, can be conceived as dialectic rather than as a metaphor. If, in opposition to substantialism (Carpio, 2003), things cannot be considered in themselves but only in terms of their relations, it is possible to conceive the biological body as the thesis and clothing as the anti-thesis, the synthesis of which would be body image or images. In this line of thought, it can be ventured that clothing may be a constituent part of the body image that we form of ourselves, reason because it also would integrate the identity of subjects and intervene in the regulation of social exchanges that individuals establish with others and with their environment. The study of the specific ways in which clothing is involved in the relationships that individuals establish with their surroundings and society can be enriched from different disciplinary perspectives and under the scrutiny of various methods of analysis. All these lines of analysis will be stimulating and appropriate for the planned study. In this respect, this assay attempts to register a particular bibliographic tour, among many possible others, that is concerned with the issue under study and report on the significant contributions that may be useful for investigations of this nature. Un doubtedly, this task has an initial character and will achieve its full significance once the contributions collected are tested in the fieldwork.

Keywords : Institution; Body; Clothing; Culture; Society; Metaphor; Subjectivity.

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