Body & Soul

Hertha Firnberg Position T 81 Body & soul Elisabeth MIXA 27.06.2000 At the turn of the 21st century an unmistakable "body boom" can be seen. The "body" is omnipresent in visual/virtual culture and has risen to the position of the central subject of leisure and life-style media, of (sci-fi) films and public health campaigns. The cyborg, the technological human, has become a familiar figure of "hyper- mediated techno-culture". Since the 1980s, sociologists, cultural studies and feminist researchers have also noticeably been concerning themselves with the body in relation to the radical technological and social revolutionary processes of post- modernity which have been under way for some time now. The research subject addresses a previously under-exposed aspect of the current debate on the new (body) images and public health: in the course of the re-conceptualisation of the body, a re-conceptualisation and strengthened control of the "psychological" is also on the agenda. This is suggested among other things by the extension of the psy-complex, by the wellness movement, though also in the self-monitoring practices published in the pages of "self-help" magazines. The aim of this research is to locate the new identity- (co-) constituting body and self technologies in the current health and wellness discourses and to analyse them in the context of the deep-going (technological) transformations in western societies regarding (new) images of body and (gendered) identity. The theoretical approach is through (post) structuralist theories of medicine, in particular on the normalisation practices in the area of the psy-complex, centred on the "civilised" body, as well as the current concepts of contested gender identities. Applying the methodology and methods of Foucaultian discourse analysis and its further development, body images and identity concepts that are negotiated under the term health/wellness are to be investigated from a technology- and psycho-historical perspective, in particular with regard to gender difference and gender identities. The subject of the research belongs at the intersection of sociology/cultural studies and feminist studies. The innovative character of the research project is evident both in relation to the chosen subject and in relation to the methodological approach: in Austria in particular, the question of how new self identities constitute themselves through body images in the intensifying health/wellness discourses has hardly been taken account of in theoretical analyses and is thus under-developed.

The Subject The starting position of this research was the observation - both in academic and in everyday culture - of intensifying and shifting body and self subjectifications in western cultures as they become apparent in particular in the wellness boom. Objective The objective of the research was twofold: on the one hand it was a question of recording and analysing the phenomenon of wellness, which has not been analysed by the sciences/cultural studies. On the other hand the question of what body and self concepts or conceptions are being re-produced by and through wellness discourses (in Austria) was followed up. Methods From a culture and discourse-analytical perspective and in the understanding of social research, the research was conceived as a dynamic process with research cycles building on each other, in which various qualitative methods (image-text analyses, artefact analyses, participating observations, text and discourse analyses) were applied. The demands of ensuring the quality of quantitative research were taken into account. Results This research is one of the first comprehensive academic analyses of the wellness boom and provides an intensive phenomenal description of the wellness discourse field with all its artefacts, institutions, practices and trainings in particular with regard to the setting of meanings and self presentations. Wellness rhetorics and forms of staging play with neologisms, collages and fusions (of the most diverse cultural elements), superlatives, with hidden imperatives and in particular with magic in the wake of an apparent pressure for aestheticisation. Wellness can be described as a significant contemporary discourse, as a health discourse in which health and sickness are no longer visible. Contrary to the manifest promises of healing for healthy people - the unity of "body- mind and soul" - at a latent level new fragmentations, virtualisation, technicising and commercialising become apparent: emotions - the control of corporeality under the diktat of feasibility and the phantasm of boundless well- feeling; the me plc - self-management of the entrepreneurial self; the mental paradise - a virtual location and as wellness oasis a new institution in society. As a discourse concerning "good health", as a holistic lifestyle and ethics debate, wellness can also be read as a post-modern decency discourse. Value The study is located in a research desideratum. It is characterised by an innovative approach, both in relation to the questions and the interpretations as well as in regard to methodology and the methods employed. The relevance of the research lies in its analysis and consideration of a symptomatic phenomenon of contemporary culture of western societies. As a basic research it offers a point of departure for inter- trans- and international academic cooperation and for follow-up research. On the most general level it is a contribution to the critical analysis of self- evident norms.