This book investigates how desires to transform our bodies can bring utopia to the present, and how utopian practices often lead to distinctly dystopian or anti-utopian outcomes. It is the first comprehensive study to address the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism. Franziska Bork Petersen discusses doping, bodybuilding and cosmetic surgery alongside practices such as retouching the body as image on social media, and looks at how fashion modelling and performance estrange the body. Techniques and technologies to transform our bodies are increasingly accessible and suggest an excessive identification of the body as lacking. To be a body in a culturally meaningful way, we incessantly improve our bodily appearance and capacity. The book therefore addresses the utopianism inherent in a cultural understanding of bodies as increasingly controllable.

Hersteller:
Springer Verlag GmbH
juergen.hartmann@springer.com
Tiergartenstr. 17
DE 69121 Heidelberg