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The Naked Subject: Nudity, Context and Sexualization in Contemporary Culture

2003/09/01 by Rob Cover · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · #Fashion and Cultural Textiles #Art, Politics, and Modernism #Sexuality, Behavior, and Technology #Sexualization #Subject (documents) #Context (archaeology) #Legitimacy #Sociology #Postmodernism #Public space #Gender studies #Aesthetics #Political science #Human sexuality #Art #History #Politics #Law #Literature

paper · doi:10.1177/1357034x030093004

openalex publication_date 2003/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which contemporary western cultures have attempted to legitimize certain sites of bodily nakedness (such as communal showers, bathing children and other `public' displays) by maintaining a contextual space or frame which attempts to exclude the sexual. Noting the ways in which that legitimacy has broken down in recent decades, the article suggests that the slippage between the sexual and the naked results from both a breakdown in the `heterosexual matrix' as well as a postmodern crisis of `the context'.

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