Feminist existentialism, biopolitics, and critical phenomenology in a time of bad health / / Talia Welsh.

• Superior document: Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
• VerfasserIn: Welsh, Talia,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, New York : : Routledge,, [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Language: English
• Series: Interdisciplinary Research in Gender
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (201 pages)

"This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to praise or blame individuals for their health is politically and economically motivated and has reinforced growing health disparities between the wealthy and poor under the guise of individual responsibility. We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve our health from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to, in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health's main feature is to discuss the impact of the increasing shift to model of individual responsibility for one's health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health, but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access. This volume would primarily be of interest to academics and students interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in the fields of philosophy, public health, gender studies, and sociology. It would also be a useful resource for non-specialists interest in health, as well as public health and medical professionals seeking more understanding of how to encourage healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination"-- Provided by publisher.

Table of Contents

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Chapter 1: The good health imperative -- Smokers, drinkers, and the fat -- The cost of smokers, drinkers, and the fat -- The good health imperative -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 2: A critical phenomenology of health and illness -- Phenomenologies of illness and disease -- Health as a being at home and being capable -- Health as morality: obesity and disability -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 3: Feminist phenomenologies and self-regulating bodies -- The development of agency to care for the body -- Female self-regulation -- Feminist alternatives -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 4: Biopolitics and personal responsibility -- Foucault's biopolitical revolution -- The case of childhood obesity -- Problematizations -- Parental responsibility -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 5: Marxism, reproductive labor, and the body as fetish object -- Reproductive labor-dirty and clean work -- The evolution of human need -- Body as fetish object -- Affirmative culture and the good health imperative -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 6: Alternative visions of health- somaesthetics and innumerable healths -- Create dangerously -- Creative self-fashioning -- Nietzsche's innumerable healths -- Innumerable selves and eternal return of the same -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Chapter 7: Toward an existential ethics of working on the self -- Existential anxiety and bracketing the good health imperative -- Paths and fitting -- Roles, ambiguity, and natality -- Vulnerability and health -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Bibliography -- Index.