Overview
- Addresses the paradoxical relationship between bodies and utopianism
- Connects altering the body to the desire for utopia
- Poses that utopianism is inherent when treating bodies as controllable
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Utopianism (PASU)
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Table of contents (11 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Impossible, Imagined and Imaginary Bodies
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
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Human Enhancement
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
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Utopian Estrangement
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
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Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
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.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Franziska Bork Petersen is a performance scholar and teaches at Roskilde University, Denmark, the Danish National School of Performing Arts, and Heinrich-Heine Universität, Germany. Her work on dance, performance art and fashion has appeared in Performance Research and MedieKultur: Journal of media and communication research.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Body Utopianism
Book Subtitle: Prosthetic Being Between Enhancement and Estrangement
Authors: Franziska Bork Petersen
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Utopianism
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-97486-2
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-97485-5Published: 05 July 2022
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-97488-6Published: 05 July 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-97486-2Published: 04 July 2022
Series ISSN: 2946-4471
Series E-ISSN: 2946-448X
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: VIII, 311
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Modern History, History, general, Cultural History