Social Skin

Though Man is born naked but is everywhere in clothes (or their symbolic equivalents). We cannot tell how this came to be, but we can say something about why it should be so and what it means. Taking the social construction of space from Lefebvre, and seen through the religious studies, we have taken a slight detour by developing the function of the sensual body as constitutive in the creation of social-sacred space. The skinscape of religion, ancient and modern, east and west, unfolds in the space between the natural and the artificial, the neural and the cultural. An analysis of social-sacred space needs grounding in the sensing body– there are sensual meanings made before and beyond what can be linguistically and propositionally grasped. The aesthetic body, however, does not merely sense, it must be sensing something, some sensational form. At this juncture, meaning, space, and religious experience are produced.