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86 (Melucci 1989, 122)
(Melucci 1989, 122)
The body is invading the social sphere. Through a widespread process of medicalization, clinics and centres devoted to the ’care’ of the body are institutionalized; within a vast network of services, experts lay down the criteria of health and sickness. Meanwhile interest in physical well-being is growing. Exercise and fitness training reappear in new expressive forms, while oriental disciplines like yoga have never been more popular. Although these are informal, uncoordinated, activities and apparently individual, they signal the emergence of new collective needs and a new culture of the body.’
The discovery of human beings’ natural dimension is one component of this trend. The human being is one natural system among many. Our society’s past is marked by principles of transcendence, such as God or the laws of history, which are situated beyond everyday social relations. In the face of such principles, the body could not but be seen as a limit, as the product of a fall, as degraded nature in opposition to the spirit. With the death of the gods and the demise of their most recent incarnation - history as a process with an ultimate destination the way was opened to the discovery of humanity’s naturalness. [Melucci, Alberto. 1989. Nomads of the Present. London: Hutchinson Radius.]
