ABSTRACT
We rarely acknowledge this optimistic desire to transcend the body as a utopian impulse. Plenty of shouty talk about the dangers of idealism, the hidden and pernicious encroachment of moralism, the heady pleasures of the body – but little about that old desire to escape the body as a route to ultimate freedom and peace. What follows also plays out this old stand-off between ethereal ambitions and physical limits – the only difference is the attempt to balance the pleasures and the drawbacks of our inescapable bodily existence.
