From Asceticism to the Modern Diet Society: The Body between Sanctity and Nonentity
Journal Title: insan & toplum - Year 2015, Vol 6, Issue 1
Abstract
This paper analyses — not chronologically, but sociologically — the transition from the age of asceticism, which advises one to eat like a bird in order to perfect the soul, to the modern age, in which the diet society is highlighted. It asserts that this ambivalent and conflictive situation between soul and body creates a collective regime in which the human being is embodied and the body becomes nothing. The body, being beyond all means of liberation, turns into both an unending capital and an abysmal swamp of modernity. Under this regime, the Self reflects upon itself and categorises the body as either skinny or fat. Besides, the exhibitive industrialised visualisation of the Self is unexpectedly blinding. Here, the body disappears as much as it is highlighted. The new style-life formula, which reduces bliss and salvation to the gym, slimming pills and diet programmes, incessantly guides the masses through the medical sciences and, in particular, the media. Every tendency towards achieving absolute beauty and happiness is reborn from its own ashes as a new form of dissatisfaction and leads to endless searching. Through the Mexican film Malos Hábitos (2007), this paper focuses on the dichotomies between physical and spiritual existence, the individual and the social body, hunger and gluttony, mirror and appearance, and desire and dissatisfaction. In this respect, it implicitly offers a critical stance of secular discourses focusing around the concepts of the body and freedom that have often been debated in recent years in Turkey.
Authors and Affiliations
Sertaç Timur Demir
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP315841
- DOI 10.12658/human.society.6.11.M0160
- Views 65
- Downloads 0
Connections with Plato’s Symposium and Dionysian Rituals within the Context of Imitating God’s Immortality
Longing for immortality is one of the most pronounced themes of the ancient religions. The theme of being immortal -like god- is found in Dionysian rituals, as a part of Dionysian religion. The worshippers of Dionysius b...
Social Depth, Social Media and Youth
Social media showing itself in every aspect of daily life and changing and transforming individuals and society relations at all points. Due to the structural form, social media mainly allows individual use; but on the o...
The Effects of Social and Intellectual Factors on Being a Nonbeliever
Nonbelief is the general term for such attitudes as atheism, agnosticism, and apatheism, all of which means the absence of religious or spiritual beliefs; the absence of belief in supernatural beings or God/gods; and the...
Batılı Bilgi, Pozitivizm ve Felsefe Çerçevesinde Avrupamerkezci Tarih Anlayışının Temelleri
Western philosophy and modern Western science regard themselves obliged to produce the knowledge of the universal in accordance with Platonian universalism. Therefore, singularist logic is paradoxical, completely remote...
Türkiye’de Tarih Ders Kitaplarında Avrupamerkezcilik
This study examines the coverage of Eurocentrism in Turkish history course books. In this regard, the means by which Eurocentrism has influence in historiography is identified. Such incursion includes Eurocentrism’s infl...