Ontology of Clothes I

*Special note: As stated in my Christmas post, these four posts on the ontology of clothes are likely not every reader’s cup of tea.  They are one essay and pretty dense.  Usually, writings I post are meant to be intellectual but accessible.  I hope they are!  However, this essay was written for academics and will…

Ontology of Clothes II

This understanding of vanity is peculiar and, I believe, problematic, but Leahy thinks it mistakes the nature of what sovereignty targets: in Agamben, the body liberated from modern politics is potency no longer forced to act; but for Leahy the body is never reserved (209; Foundation, 577), for “the body itself, the infinite surface,” (189)…

Ontology of Clothes III

Agamben follows French historian and theorist, Michel Foucault, in thinking of politics in terms of biopower. This is why the dispute between Leahy and Agamben about sovereignty is a matter of the body. And now also the connection with vanity and clothes becomes clearer: adornment means fashion clothes our biology. What precisely is the connection…

Ontology of Clothes IV

In Ecstatic Morality I show that John Paul II’s theology of the body relies on a high Christology, Christ, an offering metaphysical, the very order of Natural Law. Leahy’s is also a Christological metaphysics: “the beginning of the body, of society, of the new humanity conceived essentially, i.e., conceived qua historical actuality as the Artifactual…