Petersen Franziska Bork. Body Utopianism Prosthetic Being Between Enhancement and Estrangement

Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. — 311 p. — (Palgrave Studies in Utopianism). — ISBN 978-3-030-97485-5.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.Impossible, Imagined and Imaginary Bodies
On Being a Body in Thomas More’s Utopia
Impossible Body Escapes
Technological Bodies Becoming Images
Human Enhancement
Bodies of Lack
Utopias of Bodily Capacity
Beautifying Body Modification
Utopian Estrangement
Bodily Estrangements of Space
Estrangements of Corporeality
Estrangements of Reproduction