The Clothed Body

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Taste: Common Sense and Received Meaning Arendt’s political reading of the relation between taste and sensus communis in Kant may be likened to Gramsci’s concept of common sense as ‘spontaneous philosophy’ – a readily accessible sense of things devoid of metaphysical abstruseness – and ‘good sense’, evidence of which may be traced to language, popular religion and that system of beliefs and opinions commonly called ‘folklore’ (Kant 1790 §40; It. tr. 151). Yet Gramsci also took account of common sense as stereotyped, generic, automatic thought and speech, and as prejudice. In order to demonstrate the difference between good sense and common sense he used a passage in I promessi sposi about the plague and the fact that the few who refused to believe the plague-spreaders’ story could not defend their opinion against the more general popular one: ‘Good sense was there,’ writes Manzoni, ‘but it was hidden by the fear of common sense’ (Gramsci 1975: 1483). Kant, on the other hand, felt that this duplicity could be avoided by practising his three maxims of common sense: (1) think for yourself; (2) think by putting yourself in someone else’s place; (3) think in such a way as to be always in agreement with yourself (Arendt 1982: 68–9, 95). Kant felt that the negation of the first maxim (not thinking for yourself) generated prejudice, the opposite of enlightenment. Common sense can never be prejudice, since it contains within itself a way of thinking which is free, extensive and coherent, qualities corresponding respectively to the three maxims. Not accepting passively the point of view of others, but testing it against the first and second maxims is what broadens the mind, expands and extends thought. Arendt glimpsed the political nature of Kant’s philosophy (and, we might add, of the concept of taste itself) in this notion of community. An important quality semiotically, too, since the subject in this community is the ‘world spectator’, Weltbetrachter, on which meaning, as ‘the observer’s judgement’, is based (Arendt 1982: 98). The condition for such a judgement, which produces disinterested pleasure, is taste. Kant notes that the loss of this sensus communis permitting us to judge as spectators leads to folly, as the ostentation of sensus privatus. Thus in the Kantian system there is a direct link between taste and reason. Arendt interprets the difference between the English common sense (in German Gemeinsinn) and the Latin sensus communis, or community sense (in German Gemeinschaftlicher Sinn), as the difference between ‘the same sense for everyone in private’ (common sense) and an ‘extra sense’ that places us in a community (community sense), and through which the authentic humanity of each individual manifests itself (1982: 108). For Arendt, the fact that sensus communis is a specifically human attribute is closely connected to the fact that it depends on communication, on 47
The Clothed Body language as the true dimension of human community. Implicit in this community dimension is a very particular form of persuasion, one that takes account of the fact that even if you cannot persuade anyone to agree with your judgements on taste, you can nevertheless appeal, through language, to a community sense where taste loses its idiosyncratic nature (111–12). Fashion may be considered as a system capable of guaranteeing a mediation between taste, common sense and community. 2 It represents the sign system through which the communication of taste, in the Kantian form of ‘the activity of reflection’, 3 is fully realized. Fashion is immediate communicability and the formulation of taste irrespective of the contents of taste itself. Moreover, fashion concerns a condition of taste that may be defined tautologically: the value of fashion, as dictated by taste, is measured simply in terms of ‘being fashionable’, without any functional, objective or practical reference. Conceiving of fashion as a sign system means considering it in relation not only to its signification, but also to its significance. Fashion is based on value-situations in which individuals behave according to preferences. And a value-situation is, by definition, relational, since the values that enter into play in human behaviour are never wholly objective, nor wholly subjective. A condition of aesthetic value-situations is certainly taste, which in the Kantian sense of sensus communis extends aesthetic value to include community choices and behaviour; that is, taste forges a link between aesthetics and politics, as Arendt gleaned in the Critique of Judgement. The concept of value is determined by ‘value-making human behaviour’, according to Rossi-Landi; that is, by ‘the human ability to produce values and live them’. Often the analysis of value-situations takes slight account of the role of language. This leads us to think habitually of values as adjectives organized around pairs: ‘good-bad’, ‘ugly-beautiful’, ‘just-unjust’ and so on; or of nouns which are by nature neither positive nor negative (Rossi- Landi 1954: 34). In reality, Rossi-Landi maintains, the noun already contains within itself a positive or negative value, and this becomes clear when we think of nouns like ‘state’, ‘community’ and ‘individual’, which are ‘already invested with a value-type, either positive or negative’. Rossi-Landi excludes two positions from the attribution of values: objectivism, in which values are inherent to the structure of things external to human beings, and subjectivism, in which values are inherent to the structure of the evaluating ‘I’ (1954: 35). Rossi-Landi contrasts ‘value-making human behaviour’ to both these ontological positions that presume semiotic material to be organized according to values independently of the processes and modes of the production of values. To the question ‘what happens when we speak of value?’ Rossi-Landi replies by proposing to 48
Page 2 and 3: DRESS, BODY, CULTURE Oxford • New
Page 4 and 5: Acknowledgements I would like to th
Page 6 and 7: Introduction An image in Marguerite
Page 8: Introduction between signs and thei
Page 11 and 12: The Clothed Body between its variou
Page 13 and 14: The Clothed Body ence to one of the
Page 15 and 16: The Clothed Body sense - but are ra
Page 17 and 18: The Clothed Body system of images,
Page 20 and 21: Dress and Social Identity In 1937 t
Page 22 and 23: Dress and Social Identity open, ‘
Page 24 and 25: Dress and Social Identity back thei
Page 26 and 27: Dress and Social Identity came out.
Page 28 and 29: Dress and Social Identity to see a
Page 30: Dress and Social Identity 4. Transl
Page 33 and 34: The Clothed Body well beyond the no
Page 35 and 36: The Clothed Body tattooing are tran
Page 37 and 38: The Clothed Body The opening scenes
Page 39 and 40: The Clothed Body at prohibitive cos
Page 41 and 42: The Clothed Body Caronia (1994) giv
Page 43 and 44: The Clothed Body cartoons, in any c
Page 46 and 47: Taste between Common Sense and Rece
Page 48 and 49: Taste: Common Sense and Received Me
Page 60 and 61: In The Fashion System Barthes write
Page 62 and 63: Everyday Models Clothing fetishisms
Page 64 and 65: Everyday Models Classic examples of
Page 66 and 67: Everyday Models in this passage the
Page 68 and 69: The Face and the Gaze The fascinati
Page 70 and 71: The Face and the Gaze Indeed El-Hou
Page 72 and 73: The Face and the Gaze their exagger
Page 74 and 75: The Face and the Gaze (an occasion
Page 76: The Face and the Gaze Nature and ar
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Page 88 and 89: Intertextual Strategies and Contemp
Page 90 and 91: Intertextual Strategies and Mytholo
Page 96 and 97: Fashion and Cinema At the beginning
Page 98 and 99: Fashion and Cinema better, as a sys
Page 100 and 101: Fashion and Cinema backdrop both to
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Fashion and Cinema individual and s
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Fashion and Cinema A film that may
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Fashion and Cinema On each wrist is
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Fashion and Cinema 1992b). These co
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Fashion and Cinema Today the imager
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Fashion and Cinema the same time. I
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The Clothed Body In the Italian com
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The Clothed Body their collections:
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The Clothed Body veritable universe
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Mass Fashion: The Role of Fashion i
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Time Barthes writes that fashion su
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Time The past returns, but the retr
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Time as much ours as anyone else’
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Time regulated by public convention
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Time firstly, who knows?) the desig
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Time important protagonist on this
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Fashion Intertexts The great Italia
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Fashion Intertexts the criminal’s
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Fashion Intertexts relegated to ‘
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Fashion Intertexts uniforms, some o
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Fashion Intertexts Notes 1. The fou
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The Clothed Body In 1900, 88 per ce
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The Clothed Body yourself from the
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The Clothed Body loved by teenagers
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The Clothed Body band, which can st
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The Clothed Body It is certainly tr
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The Clothed Body are no longer simp
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Bibliography Arendt, Hanna (1982),
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Bibliography Costa & Nolan, 1987.
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Bibliography —— and Wilkes, And
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Arendt, Hanna, 46-9, 54, 54n1 Ash,
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Negroponte, Nicholas, 35, 120, 131
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