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Salon.com Books | Hipster rebel punk outsiders — 99 cents a dozen

Liberal humanism, at least in its popular incarnation, has always insisted that while the human body is imprisoned by circumstance, the soul always remains free. Niedzviecki draws heavily on Foucault’s famous assertion that the reverse is actually true: Every human being possesses at least some physical freedom to do what he will with his body, but the soul is an “instrument of a political anatomy,” impressed upon us by the institutions and ideologies around us. We are free, in other words, to become Pilates enthusiasts, drag queens or debauched junkies. We are not free, Niedzviecki writes, “to evoke an individuality that has not already been implanted in us by a combination of state-sponsored regulation and the wish-fulfillment fantasies of our pop culture.”

More re-hashing of stuff explored more interestingly by Debord (and, as the article points out, Adorno + Horkheimer before him) - salutary nonetheless. It’s not tagged ‘zeitgeist’ for nothing.

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