Utopias, dystopias and socialist biopolitics

William Morris, ornament and the coordinates of the body

This paper considers William Morris’s approach to the ornamental in terms of late nineteenth-century evolutionary theory and physiological aesthetics. It makes a case for the importance of allusions to the body in Morris’s designs. The corporeal reference is shown to be an aspect of the artist’s materialist project. The way in which the body appears is in the work is examined. The intimated body is inside-out, bi-gendered, decentred and spatially reconfigured. The social and aesthetic implications of this remapping of the body are considered. (with Rowbotham)

Edward Carpenter: Body and Soul

TBA