Owen Hatherley on Hervé Juvin's The Coming of the Body

Owen Hatherley, author of A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain,  gets to grips with the distinctive perspective of Hervé Juvin's The Coming of the Body for the New Humanist: 

The promise of the perfectibility of the human being, the forging of a new man through industry and technology, has long been considered a Communist or at least Modernist notion that we have sensibly discarded, but Juvin sees it fulfilled under neoliberal capitalism, in its postmodern culture ...

... whether aiming with an arch, erudite wit at the '60s generation's surgically augmented self-obsession, the smugness of Amelie, "sexagenerian supergroups", superstars shopping for adoption in sub-Saharan Africa or the hedonistic treadmill of "pleasure as a duty", this book is a pleasure in itself, a deliciously quotable treatise that need not be swallowed whole.

Visit the New Humanist to read the review in full.