The ‘Unnatural’ Body
No human society has ever left the body just the way that it was in nature. We all manipulate our bodies in some way—by drawing on them, coloring them, carving them, covering up parts of them—almost as though we were never satisfied with them. We do all sorts of things in order to distance our bodies from their natural state, to make them ever more ‘human,’ i.e. cultural. And in so doing, every society expresses its aesthetic norms and its aspirations. From haircuts to tattoos, from scratching to plastic surgery, from body paintings to cosmetics, human imagination and creativity offer us many opportunities to manipulate the body. Such practices have become a field of investigation by cultural anthropology as they represent a form of writing that humans try to imprint—in more or less high color, with more or less deep signs—in that blank page, their body.
Marco Aime, is professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Genoa. He has conducted research on the Alps and in West Africa. He regularly contributes to ‘La Stampa’ and ‘Liberazione’ newsdailies, and has been a consultant to ‘Pistoia-Dialogues on Man’ since its first edition. He also sits on the jury of the Chatwin Prize. In addition to his many scientific papers, Aime has authored a number of books: Le radici nella sabbia (EDT, 1999); Diario Dogon (Bollati Boringhieri, 2000); La casa di nessuno. I mercati in Africa occidentale (Bollati Boringhieri, 2002); L’incontro mancato (Bollati Boringhieri, 2005); Gli specchi di Gulliver (Bollati Boringhieri, 2006); Timbuctu (Bollati Boringhieri, 2008); Il diverso come icona del male (with E. Severino, Bollati Boringhieri, 2009); Gli uccelli della solitudine (Bollati Boringhieri 2010); La macchia della razza (Ponte alle Grazie, 2009); Eccessi di culture (Einaudi, 2004); Il primo libro di antropologia (Einaudi, 2008); Una bella differenza (Einaudi 2009); Il dono al tempo di Internet (with A. Cossetta, Einaudi, 2010); Verdi tribù del Nord. La Lega vista da un antropologo (Laterza, 2012).