The Body, Anatomy, and Aesthetics

In a 2022 article, one of a number of related works, and drawing on the work of Didier Deleule and François Guery (2014)– the late art theorist Marina Vishmidt critiqued the manner in which an analysis of ‘bodies’ seemed to be overly focused on the register of vulnerability, or the post-structuralist, discursive, or psychoanalytic dimensions, thus relegating bodies excessively to the realm of the abstract, to the exclusion of the concrete. Anatomy, with regards to both its aesthetic and scientific purposes, also has abstract and concrete dimensions – as innovative recent work analyzing anatomy within its broader social and historical contexts demonstrate. See, for example, the recent special issue of The Anatomical Record (Laitman and Smith, 2022), or the work of Michael Sappol (2004; 2024).

This CfA is specifically interested in the body, inclusive of anatomy, and will seek to not only situate and read the body and anatomy within specific political economic contexts (which are not solely confined to capitalism, although this is a proposed focus) – but also, how those contexts produce the body (see, for example, Blayney et al., 2022) and anatomy themselves, and how this may be reflected back or interpreted through specific aesthetic works. This therefore additionally entails looking at the relationship between the abstract and the concrete – and therefore, for example, how the abstract of aesthetics, amongst other things, may relate back in a dialectical, mutually interlinked relationship with the concrete of the economy. In addition, this CfA wishes to concretize the body and anatomy, in both their individual and collective registers, and how the abstract and the concrete dialectically shape and produce each other in relation to the body and anatomy. In so doing, the interplay and distinction between the private body and the body that appears in the public sphere (see, for example, Butler, 2011), how this might be reflected in aesthetic works, and what this tells us about the public sphere – will also be considered.

This CfA is therefore interested in articles that explore, but are not limited to:

• The body in aesthetic works and its relation to the public sphere
• Anatomy, aesthetics, and the public sphere
• The history of anatomy
• Queer, intersex, and trans anatomies
• Race, gender, class, and anatomy and the body in relation to the public sphere
• The evolution of the representation and understanding of queer, intersex, and trans bodies
• The production and mediation of the body within specific political economic contexts, including capitalism
• Urban design and the production and mediation of the body