The Body in Anthropological Discourse. Social Control of the Body

Abstract

The paper examines the human body as a transhistorical and intercultural phenom­enon whose subjectivization takes place exclusively in the social sphere and through interaction with other bodies. Its meaning is always more conceptual than material, despite the physical fact, and that is why it is constantly faced with some choices, limitations, and even alienations. The autonomy of the body possessed by the subject is, in fact, limited since it is defined by cultural norms, just as any de­privation of primary sovereignty means instrumentalization, subjugation, degrada­tion, etc. Therefore, in the article, in addition to a brief review of several represen­tative interpretations of the body in the social sciences, again mostly through the socio-anthropological discourse, the independence and (im)possibility of auto­nomous action of the body is analyzed, i.e. of the subject in the complex social re­lations and meanings it represents. The relationship between the social structure and the individual is complex, conceived through relational positions in which so­cial control of individual affects by means of external and internal compulsions is always present and which conditions the (re)shaping of all human expressions in the sphere of the social. That is, it represents a kind of institutionalization of “af­fective neutrality”, which is reflected in the renunciation of immediate satisfaction in the interest of a disciplined organization and personal goals in the long term. The emphasis in the work is precisely on the conceptualization and reproduction of social power through the “disciplining” of the body, especially in the contempo­rary, extremely visualized (and medialized) civilization in which both the ethical and, above all, the aesthetic body is “formatted” through selected and/or imposed sets of meanings that arise, first of all, from consumerist culture and consumer practice.