Summary
Contents
Subject index
This book provides a fascinating examination of the relationship between consumption, the idea of the body and the formation of the self. In tracing these connections, The Consuming Body develops a profile of individuality in the late twentieth century - in both its bodily and mental aspects. Pasi Falk offers a major synthesis and critical assessment of the debates surrounding the body, the self and contemporary consumer culture. The author explores two fundamental issues for modern social theory - the delineation of modern consumption and the body's historically changing position in various cultural orders. In the course of his argument he examines both metaphors of consumption and investigates the issues of representation i
Corporeality and History
Corporeality and History
The tale of the human body and corporeality is not concerned with the phylogeny of the humanization of the ape. It is not the classification of generic traits into a consecutive evolutionary series; it is cultural history in the most general meaning of the concept. As such, any mere accumulation of generic features by the ‘classifying reason’ for defining the differentia specifica of man (as distinct from animals) provides only a fragmentary picture of the historicity of the human body. What makes the organic entity we call ‘body’ precisely the human body only becomes evident in the field of culture as constituted in the unity of the body's social status and functions and the cultural meanings of the body. The ...
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