Meklējot zaudēto paradīzi. Ķermeņa inscenējuma sakrālā sekularitāte
Searching for the Paradise Lost. The Sacral Secularity of the Staging of the Modern Body

Summary/Abstract: Why is a long life a value by itself in contemporary society? What is the connection between the invention of the modern body and a religious attitude? Is being ugly to be considered as a sin against humanity? Should one feel responsibility with regard to one’s health? To what extent do the choices, which are forced upon the contemporary human being with regard to oneself and one’s body, provide genuine freedom? These are some of the questions focusing the research interest on the influence of the science and physiology discourse, on the life and nature of the carnal self, and the ethical problems connected with the invention of the cotemporary body. The article addresses the problem of the relationship between the invention of the modern body and the discourse of science, including the questions of the modifications and transformations of the body, the options of the contemporary medicine, as well as the social expectations regarding one’s body, or the body of the other. In order to illustrate the contemporary attitudes towards the individual body, the article compares the attitudes and praxes towards the body with the structure of a religious attitude, introducing the concept of sacral secularity, as a means of explaining the modern attitudes towards the body, and the rituals and processes connected with these attitudes. Thus, one of the theses of this article is, that certain similarities can be found between the ways society treats the human body and religiousness in general. The article strives to demonstrate, how the notion of religiousness, that previously (before 19th century) had been associated with the concept of an eternal soul, can now be attributed to the attitudes and praxes towards the body, and a striving for an „eternal” body. At the same time the religiousness of the invention of the modern body should not be viewed as an actual religion, but as a „look-like” mirroring of the innate religiousness of the human being in the everyday life. To show the non-religious character of this „religion”, the sum of these attitudes and praxes is named „sacral secularity”.

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