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Africa Adorned: Body Image and Symbols of Physical Beauty

  • African concepts of beauty and adornments of the body reflect a celebration of life in the face of death. They are derived from ancient times and the sense of man as a biological animal, within the context of life with other beasts. Among these, man is the only one who is born naked without nature's protections and adornment, such as fur, stripes, or feathers. The body is therefore an asset which must be guarded and covered and yet be expressive of strength as well as sexual desire, so as to attract a mate. Beauty, as a source of self-regard in African cultures is also often achieved through empathic identification with animals. Primordial African attitudes to life and death and symbols of beauty apparently influenced Freud's fourth instinct theory conceptions of Eros and Thanatos, as well as Erich Fromm's ideas about life-loving and death-loving societies, as illustrated in selected quotations from their writings.

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Metadaten
Author:Leah Davidson
Parent Title (English):Psychodynamic Psychiatry, Vol. 38, No. 2 (2010), pp. 255-259. [Print ISSN: 2162-2590] [doi.org/10.1521/jaap.2010.38.2.255]
Document Type:Articles
Language:English
Year of first Publication:2010
Release Date:2024/04/04
Format:to purchase via publisher
IdNo:Davidson_L_2010a
Writings about Erich Fromm (Secondary Literature):Articles / Artikel
Erich Fromm's Library and Erich Fromm Archive:Articles / Artikel
Licence (German):
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