Clothing

In archetypal symbolism, clothing represents persona, the first view the public gains of us. Persona is a kind of camouflage which lets others know only what we wish them to know about us, and nothing more.

Estés establishes clothing as the primary material symbol of the Jungian persona, then deepens the reading by recovering a pre-modern sense of persona as active display of mastery and authority rather than mere concealment.

Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph D, Women Who Run With the Wolves Myths and Stories of the Wild, 2017thesis

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

Nakedness or uniform clothing/distinctions of clothing Sexual continence/sexuality Minimization of sex distinctions/maximization of sex distinctions Absence of rank/distinctions of rank

Turner deploys clothing as a binary structural marker: liminal space is characterized by nakedness or uniform undifferentiated dress, while the status system is defined precisely by distinctions of clothing that encode rank, identity, and social position.

Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966thesis

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

the wearing of this black clothing, an intention corresponding precisely to the practice by certain groups in Sufism of wearing clothing of the same color as that of the light contemplated in the mystic station they had attained. In this way a 'chromatic harmony' is established between the esoteric and the exoteric, the hidden and the apparent.

Corbin demonstrates that in Iranian Sufism, the color of one's clothing is not conventional but ontologically calibrated to the mystic's interior spiritual station, collapsing the distinction between outer garment and inner luminous state.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971thesis

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

he puts on, clothes himself or is clothed with, steadfastness, energy, shamelessness, etc. In such cases it is consciousness and thus the organs of consciousness that are primarily affected.

Onians recovers the Homeric understanding in which clothing a virtue or quality is not figurative but describes an actual envelopment of the organs of consciousness, making the psychic state literally a garment worn by the self.

Onians, R B, The origins of European thought about the body, the mind,, 1988supporting

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial.

Turner's broader account of liminality contextualizes the suspension of clothing distinctions as part of a systematic erasure of the markers by which cultural space ordinarily classifies persons.

Victor Turner, Victor Witter Turner, The Ritual Process Structure and Anti-Structure, 1966supporting

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

Physical separation from the larger society, homemade clothing of plain colors, rejection of modern devices, a religiously based agrarian lifestyle, and a distinctive language are some of the markers that set the Amish apart from others and bond them more closely to each other.

Pargament illustrates how clothing functions sociologically and religiously as a communal boundary marker, here within the Amish tradition, enforcing collective identity and religious distinction against the surrounding secular culture.

Pargament, Kenneth I, The psychology of religion and coping theory, research,, 2001supporting

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

women's clothing, see clothing, women's wood, symbolism of, 230n; see also djed pillar

Neumann's index entry signals that women's clothing constitutes a discrete symbolic category within his archetypal analysis, cross-referenced in connection with broader feminine symbolism in the history of consciousness.

Neumann, Erich, The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton, 2019aside

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →

My whole life was planned around chemo treatments. I was wearing a wig and feeling lousy about my body.

Frank's narrative records how medical illness-related clothing, specifically a wig during chemotherapy, participates in the disciplined body's experience of dissociation, making dress a site where bodily alienation and self-perception converge.

Frank, Arthur W., The Wounded Storyteller: Body, Illness, and Ethics, 1995aside

Expand passageDig deeper with Sebastian →