Committed to providing a form of this-worldly salvation to its largely white, male, and wealthy p... more Committed to providing a form of this-worldly salvation to its largely white, male, and wealthy practitioners, biohacking is a popular "citizen science" movement that applies a life-hacking mentality to the intimate spaces of the body by embracing DIY biology. Exploring the contours of its power and privilege in the United States today, this essay works to historicize the contemporary biohacking movement by attending to discourses produced by some of its key personalities, its depictions in popular media, and to the growing body of academic scholarship that seeks to theorize biohacking's logics and rhetorics. After first constructing a basic genealogy and typology of the movement, this essay then considers the religio-secular frameworks that shape biohacking's unique form of techno-utopia. In particular, it examines what kind of future individuals are being promised in a world where they are invited to become superhuman, if they have the time and resources to pursue immortality.
While calorie counting seems an utterly secular and mundane practice in the United States, body m... more While calorie counting seems an utterly secular and mundane practice in the United States, body management has historically been and remains a weighty matter intimately linked with morality. Weight loss cultures and diet reform movements tell us quite a bit about both the aspirations as well as the apprehensions of particular times and places. Over the last few decades, scholars have started to chart different weight loss cultures in the United States and how they have emerged, interacted, and evolved over time. Diet reform movements in the United States, we have learned, are ultimately entanglements of religion, secularism, and gendered bodies. This essay considers how some scholars have tried to make sense of these entanglements by exploring three key approaches. Ultimately, we will find that bodies and weight management became and continue to be sites where tensions between religion and secularism were and are negotiated. In 1854, a young woman named Fida took out a personal ad. In it, she describes herself as "a plain simple-hearted maiden, about medium height, full form, blue eyes, brown hair, and a cheerful glow of health upon my cheeks" and, further, "free as the birds that flit around my country home, confined to no sect, chained by no creed; have been a truth-seeking reformer for some years" (p. 60). She reports that she is looking for a man with "a moral character without a blemish" committed to spiritualism and vegetarianism and, preferably, of "medium height, or a little under, with slender form, dark eyes and hair" (Fida, 1854, p. 60). Fida was part of the water cure movement, one of many health reform movements of the 19th century. The water cure was notable in that it was largely organized by and for women. Most hydropathic spas, where one partook of the water cure, were run by women and many functioned as epicenters for dress reform, temperance, and the women's rights movement-indeed, the first National Dress Reform Association meeting was held at the Glenhaven Water-Cure. The movement's primary periodical, Water-Cure Journal, was published between 1845 and
Pro-ana is an online community that shares resources that support the progression and maintenance... more Pro-ana is an online community that shares resources that support the progression and maintenance of eating disorders. It simultaneously offers participants anonymity and visibility in virtual space as well as the chance to develop social connections with other like-minded individuals who support, rather than censure, their “deviant” behaviors. This paper attends to the intersection of religion, embodiment, and digital culture in the pro-ana movement by exploring how anas embody religious values through their performances of pro-ana culture. We see this both in terms of the more obvious mobilizations of religious rhetorics common with some of the pro-ana community, as well as in more subtle manifestations of Protestant values embedded in key pro-ana commitments and behaviors. By analyzing the popular pro-ana site “MyPancakeAddiction,” I explore how anas embody this digital culture through performances of a shared value system rooted in commitments to individualism, self-control, and...
Committed to providing a form of this-worldly salvation to its largely white, male, and wealthy p... more Committed to providing a form of this-worldly salvation to its largely white, male, and wealthy practitioners, biohacking is a popular "citizen science" movement that applies a life-hacking mentality to the intimate spaces of the body by embracing DIY biology. Exploring the contours of its power and privilege in the United States today, this essay works to historicize the contemporary biohacking movement by attending to discourses produced by some of its key personalities, its depictions in popular media, and to the growing body of academic scholarship that seeks to theorize biohacking's logics and rhetorics. After first constructing a basic genealogy and typology of the movement, this essay then considers the religio-secular frameworks that shape biohacking's unique form of techno-utopia. In particular, it examines what kind of future individuals are being promised in a world where they are invited to become superhuman, if they have the time and resources to pursue immortality.
While calorie counting seems an utterly secular and mundane practice in the United States, body m... more While calorie counting seems an utterly secular and mundane practice in the United States, body management has historically been and remains a weighty matter intimately linked with morality. Weight loss cultures and diet reform movements tell us quite a bit about both the aspirations as well as the apprehensions of particular times and places. Over the last few decades, scholars have started to chart different weight loss cultures in the United States and how they have emerged, interacted, and evolved over time. Diet reform movements in the United States, we have learned, are ultimately entanglements of religion, secularism, and gendered bodies. This essay considers how some scholars have tried to make sense of these entanglements by exploring three key approaches. Ultimately, we will find that bodies and weight management became and continue to be sites where tensions between religion and secularism were and are negotiated. In 1854, a young woman named Fida took out a personal ad. In it, she describes herself as "a plain simple-hearted maiden, about medium height, full form, blue eyes, brown hair, and a cheerful glow of health upon my cheeks" and, further, "free as the birds that flit around my country home, confined to no sect, chained by no creed; have been a truth-seeking reformer for some years" (p. 60). She reports that she is looking for a man with "a moral character without a blemish" committed to spiritualism and vegetarianism and, preferably, of "medium height, or a little under, with slender form, dark eyes and hair" (Fida, 1854, p. 60). Fida was part of the water cure movement, one of many health reform movements of the 19th century. The water cure was notable in that it was largely organized by and for women. Most hydropathic spas, where one partook of the water cure, were run by women and many functioned as epicenters for dress reform, temperance, and the women's rights movement-indeed, the first National Dress Reform Association meeting was held at the Glenhaven Water-Cure. The movement's primary periodical, Water-Cure Journal, was published between 1845 and
Pro-ana is an online community that shares resources that support the progression and maintenance... more Pro-ana is an online community that shares resources that support the progression and maintenance of eating disorders. It simultaneously offers participants anonymity and visibility in virtual space as well as the chance to develop social connections with other like-minded individuals who support, rather than censure, their “deviant” behaviors. This paper attends to the intersection of religion, embodiment, and digital culture in the pro-ana movement by exploring how anas embody religious values through their performances of pro-ana culture. We see this both in terms of the more obvious mobilizations of religious rhetorics common with some of the pro-ana community, as well as in more subtle manifestations of Protestant values embedded in key pro-ana commitments and behaviors. By analyzing the popular pro-ana site “MyPancakeAddiction,” I explore how anas embody this digital culture through performances of a shared value system rooted in commitments to individualism, self-control, and...
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