L'industrialisation de l'hédonisme Nouveaux cultes du corps : de la production de soi à la perfectibilité addictive

Abstract

The 21st century confirms a revolution: for a few decades, the perfectibility of the body has been concretized by unprecedented medical and technical progress. Life expectancy has increased in the industrialized countries and we now live older in a less suffering body. As a result, the will of a production of the body has formed with the médicalisation of birth public health prevention, pharmacology, beauty care, surgery and the obsession with the "maintenance of oneself". The body is the object of an ambivalent instrumentation. Admittedly, it is a "body for enjoyment". But the "desire to do well" also moves this dynamics, when the doctor becomes the new moralist, who says what the good life is. Thus, perfectibility becomes an obsession, an addiction which mingles with others. Thus, the required pleasure depends on the immediacy and a ceaseless projection towards the future. © De Boeck Supérieur. Tous droits réservés pour tous pays.