Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences
Thinking bodies
Breuer, Rebecca Louise
Publication date 2017
Document Version
Author accepted manuscript (AAM) Published in
Notes on ghosts, disputes and killer bodies
Link to publication
Citation for published version (APA):
Breuer, R. L. (2017). Thinking bodies. In J. Boelen, & G. Kennedy (Eds.), Notes on ghosts, disputes and killer bodies (pp. 101-104). Design Academy Eindhoven.
https://www.designacademy.nl/milan/tabid/3214/id/41/on-notes-on-ghosts-disputes-and-killer- bodies
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Download date:27 Nov 2021
Thinking Bodies Rebecca Louise Breuer
Drinking beer
Whilst I am enjoying a beer in the play area in a park during a lazy Friday afternoon in summer, my daughter is almost run over by a group of over twenty women making short sprints across the playground. They have enrolled in a boot camp programme and enjoy working out while being encouraged – yelled at – by a young man who is getting paid for doing so. Since we are in Vondelpark, in Amsterdam, the women participating in the boot camp will also (almost certainly) be familiar with the ideal of achieving a ‘killer body’, a term Dutch actress, disk jockey and businesswoman Fajah Lourens used as the title of her successful diet and exercise book, which appeared as The Killerbody Plan in English in 2016.i The boot camp women may even post before-after images of their 12-week workout plan on Instagram with a ‘fitspiration’ tag, hoping to inspire others, or remind themselves, what they are working at. And, in doing so, join many other social media bodies under the influence of a growing tendency that seems hard to combat. After all, what on earth can be wrong with maintaining a healthy lifestyle, aiming for a fit body and sharing your accomplishments online?
Representing success
Firstly it can be noted that the current emphasis upon sports and exercise is associated with being successful. Take Nike’s slogan that reads: ‘Success isn’t given. It’s earned. On the track, on the field, in the gym. With blood, sweat and the occasional tear’, for
example. Nike implies a physically fit body is a prerequisite for success in all of life’s aspects. Once you work at your body, you will be rewarded. The harder you work, the better the result. And this is precisely what sticks and adheres to the common sense idea that being fit is always a good thing. One may question whether Steven Hawking, for instance, can possibly be regarded successful in such a view upon what success may be.
The problem here lies in the fact that boot camps, fitspiration hashtags, sport brands, fitness guru’s and what not more all help to maintain the all-encompassing value system in which your physical body is placed above all else. What is more, this system does not focus upon what bodies and minds may be capable of doing (apart from becoming fit), it is merely about what they look like and the amount of work out they represent. It is hence
a system characterised by a representational logic, which adheres perfectly to the tendencies of 21-century neo-liberal capitalism: Nike’s success, the boot camp trainer’s financial profits, the sales revenues of diet and workout books all depend on the belief that achieving an ideal body is the ultimate goal in life. Moreover, on the basis of this belief all sports brands, trainers, authors and others that want to gain capital need to do is strengthen the buzz; reinforce the idea that success is predominantly found in having a physically fit body and watch how customers empty their heads, pockets and discipline themselves in a Foucauldian manner to serve and hence maintain the system in which they engulf themselves.ii
Philosophical fitness
Whereas French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that having the idea one is being watched suffices to discipline oneself to the norms of society, I suggest turning to another French philosopher to potentially find a way out of the body disciplining madness and uncover what more there may be to bodies than appearance alone. In Spinoza: Practical Philosophy Gilles Deleuze (1925-1995) writes that according to Spinoza a human being should be defined ‘not by its form, its organs, and its functions, and not as a subject either; you will define it by the affects of which it is capable”.iii Deleuze agrees with Spinoza and is not interested in what a body may be called, what it looks like, what it may represent and what it may be regarded; he chooses to focus upon what a body can do, what it affects and how it can be affected. This is a fundamentally different view upon bodies than the one we commonly adopt. For in this philosophical perspective the mind is not regarded as separate from the body. The body thinks, creates, challenges and expands existing ideas about being and having a body. It, in short, affects and is affected by other thinking, creating, challenging and expanding bodies. We, however, have grown
accustomed to recognizing what something is, rather than focussing upon what bodies can do and affect.
Back to Business
The problem Deleuze has with favouring representational qualities over affective ones can hence be convincingly connected to the manner in which the currently apparent fitness tendencies spread across society. Neo-liberal capitalist societies thrive upon representation and encourage thinking about being someone above all else. Consequently,
the ‘I’ is the core unit that is addressed, not in the least in marketing and branding.
Individuals construct their self-image on the basis of the commodities they buy and the activities they subscribe to. And even though Nike seems to advocate ‘doing’ through its
‘Just do it’ slogan, it is mainly interested in the fact that you associate doing well with the swoosh that features on your shoes or outfit. The problem with representation,
furthermore, is that it is necessarily limiting. It limits life to being and as such centres upon identifying what or who someone is or looks like. Yet life is more than looks, and even though representation serves as a nice and easy, but ultimately simplifying, tool, it is used to cut up, understand, communicate and monetise a reality which is in effect far more complex and surprising. Or as Deleuze puts it:
Representation has only a single centre, a unique and residing perspective, and in consequence a false depth. It mediates everything, but mobilises and moves nothing. Movement, for its part, implies a plurality of centres, a superposition of perspectives, a tangle of points of view, a coexistence of moments which
essentially distort representation.iv
Moving Bodies and Artistic Affect
Movement for Spinoza and Deleuze is not limited to running, stretching, jumping and working out the physical body. Movement, contrary to representation, is characterised by affecting and affected bodies whether these are human or not. And it is in art that one can encounter the creative, expanding and limitless potential of affect. Just when you thought you had figured out who you are, what your body assigns and by which characteristics (or brands) you are represented and were starting to get comfortable with, there is art to cause grief, discomfort, intense pleasure and perhaps most importantly: confusion. It may be pleasant to believe in and be occupied with the nicely ordered representational systems that feed our economy, but reality is far more complicated than that. Art confronts us with affects that succeed to shake up all that seemed solid. Whether it is Abraham Poincheval living inside a boulder for a week, Mari Katayama’s punk prosthetics, Petr Pavlensky’s scrotum nailed to the red square, or one of the many other affecting acts, bodies - whether human or not - one can encounter in life; they are here to confuse and challenge persistent existing ideas we hitherto had. Bodies excrete, bodies leak, bodies affect and are affected by other bodies in all directions, and bodies are capable of doing things far more exiting and of much more impact than merely striving towards an ideal
shape. That is why, in a time when the obsession with fitness and representation thereof is adopting grotesque forms, it is also a good idea to be reminded one can think beyond and before form and be surprised by the limitless potential of what bodies can do before they represent anything.
i Fajah Lourens, The Killerbody Plan: Recipes and Workouts to Get Lean in 12 Weeks, London, Hodder & Stoughton, 2016.
ii Michel Foucault, ‘Discipline and Punish, Panopticism’, in Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison, New York, Vintage Books, 1977, pp. 195-228.
iii Gilles Deleuze, ‘Spinoza and us’, in Spinoza: Practical Philosophy, San Francisco, City Lights Books 1988, pp. 122-130.
iv Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, London/New York: Continuum 2004 [1968], p. 67.
