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Accepted Paper:
Paper Short Abstract:
Specific notions of healthy and ailing bodies play an important role in the current conspiritual milieu. I unpack this ideal of healed body, imaginaries of Slavic and native identities which connect to it and show how it feeds into political projects of conspiritual scene in the Czech Republic.
Paper Abstract:
During the covid-19 pandemic, various forms of covid-skeptical activism and political mobilization emerged within the conspiritual milieu in the Czech Republic. Intertwining discourses of conspiracy, spirituality, and healing many of these covid-skeptical activists now attempt to move beyond the pandemic and to organize themselves into more coherent and stable political force – forming cells, activist groups, and organizations, no longer concerned only with vaccine resistance, but seeking to heal the Earth and fix the society.
Specific ideas about healthy and ailing bodies inform and shape their political projects. Participating in practices of healing and self-making rooted in alternative medicine and spirituality is a crucial part of the self-identified “awakened life.” The “awakened” see themselves as inhabiting a corrupted and toxic world. Cleansing and improving one´s body constitutes a necessary step towards further political action – the world can be healed only by healing oneself first.
I explore how these notions of a healthy, cleansed, awakened body are constructed and what role they play in the political mobilization of the contemporary conspiritual scene in the Czech Republic. Ableist imaginaries of whole and perfect bodies (and minds) meet strong personal identification with Native American bodies, dreams of the resurgence of the primordial Slavic race, concerns about vaccination and biomedical authority, as well as various practices of healing and cleansing. I pay specific attention to the performance and construction of masculinity within this context and unpack how a political action can be structured around the maintenance of a healthy body beyond biomedicine.
Beyond biomedicine: new regimes of health and wellness
Session 1 Wednesday 24 July, 2024, -