Nude Awakening – Exploring Feminism’s Use of the Body in Intersectional Contexts

Activists have made use of the naked body for multiple causes. Lactivists, naturists, and topfree activists perform what they take to be mundane activities in public in order to insist that the natural body is not an evil. More politically motivated activists use the naked body to intimidate, retaliate, demonstrate a point, or make a cause or issue visible. Depending on its intersectional context, the nude body can take on various and multiple meanings in just a single action. Nude actions often reflexively and strategically appropriate the cultural, social, and political meanings of gender and sexuality in a community or society for political ends, thereby providing a rich site for thinking the complexity of the body and the deep interconnections that exist between sexist domination and larger social justice concerns. By eliciting reactions of shame, embarrassment, fear, anger, confusion, joy, desire, and laughter, the nude body recalls us to the zero point of meaning, forcing us to confront the very formation of meaning, subjectivity, and social relations. This project explores the significance of creative uses of the exposed body from a feminist perspective to foreground innovative conceptions of materiality, bodily signification, social change, and the transformative potential of the body