Being-in-Danger: Being, Precarity, and Potential – Theoretical Speculations on the Palimpsestic Naked Body

Abstract

This article provides speculative theorization on the relationship between concepts of ‘nakedness’ and the human body. It focuses on the theoretical value of the palimpsest as a symbol through which to parse the various ways that the human body can be marked, inscribed, read and reread. In so doing, this article attempts to speculate on the manner in which being, in relation to onto-existential precarity and danger, is fluid, mutable, alterable, as well as some theoretical consequences thereof. It opens by describing the theoretical significance of the palimpsest before moving on to speculating on its relationship to the onto-existential ‘nudity’ of embodied being. It closes with some further speculations on whether or not the precarity of embodied being subtends forms of being that do not require embodiedness in order to be.

Keywords

• palimpsest
• naked
• body
• metaphysics
• markability