Technologies of the Self and the Aesthetic Project of Alternative Health

Abstract

Utilizing ethnographic materials and data from thirty-eight interviews, this article investigates the relevance of alternative health bodily regimes as a source of involvement in public life. These regimes, we argue, have an aesthetic core, a quest for perfect harmony and balance, that step by step makes people available for participation in public life. The article seeks to overcome the neglect of aesthetic sources of participation in public life as well as the neglect of the body as a symbol of risk and a source of resistance to dominant institutional arrangements. Foucault's later writings on “technologies of the self” are used to interpret alternative health regimes and open up their politicizing potential.