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Title
Body utopianism : prosthetic being between enhancement and estrangement / Franziska Bork Petersen.
ISBN
9783030974862 (electronic bk.)
3030974863 (electronic bk.)
9783030974855
3030974855
Published
Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]
Copyright
©2022
Language
English
Description
1 online resource.
Item Number
10.1007/978-3-030-97486-2 doi
Call Number
HM636
Dewey Decimal Classification
306.4/613
Summary
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. Franziska Bork Petersen is a performance scholar and teaches at Roskilde University, Denmark, the Danish National School of Performing Arts, and Heinrich-Heine Universitat, Germany. Her work on dance, performance art and fashion has appeared in Performance Research and MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research.
Note
Includes index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed July 13, 2022).
Series
Palgrave studies in utopianism.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783030974855
Introduction
PART I: IMPOSSIBLE, IMAGINED AND IMAGINARY BODIES
1. On being a body in Thomas Mores Utopia
2. Impossible body escapes
3. Technological bodies becoming images
PART II: HUMAN ENHANCEMENT
4. Bodies of Lack
5. Utopias of Bodily Capacity
6. Beautifying body modification
PART III: UTOPIAN ESTRANGEMENT
7. Bodily Estrangements of Space
8. Estrangements of corporeality
9. Estrangements of reproduction
Conclusion.