Steven Poole reviews The Coming of the Body for the Guardian
Steven Poole finds much of interest in Hervé Juvin's The Coming of the Body:
Secular westerners no longer believe in God, so they believe in their own bodies instead. Such at least is the message of Juvin's stylish and bracing autopsy of postmodern corporalism, from the health'n'fitness and lifestyle-drug industries to the "production" of children, and the general ideal of life as risk-free and ruled by pleasure. The latter might fruitfully be identified as a form of Dalrympean sentimentality: certainly Juvin has collected much appalling evidence for his case, including the claim of one thirtysomething Frenchwoman that "my beauty salon is my best friend", whose abysmal implications hardly bear contemplating.
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