Körperoptimierung und Leibgebundenheit

Kulturelle und psychische Bedeutungen permanenter Grenzüberschreitung

Abstract

In late-modern Western societies, body optimization increasingly follows a logic of permanent self-transgression, which seems to contradict the constitutive limitedness of human condition. In this article, a case study is used to illustrate how the unavailability that is conveyed in bodily experience is individually interpreted and psychologically processed, and how it is thereby also related to the cultural meanings and practices of limitless enhancement. Thus, the fading out and denial of limitedness also seems to become normalized insofar as they are just as culturally legitimized as they have psychological functions and affective qualities.