Body care and health obligation: Hexis and power in modernity

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to provide a brief reflection on the contemporary ethics imposed on the body, which points to a growing responsibility and obligation of the individual regarding healthy and correct ways of living. The central object of analysis is the body constitution in modernity, in a space of technical intervention, problematizing contemporary forms of body care, such as diets and physical exercises, which express taxonomies that come from the matrix of meanings in modernity.