期刊名称：Eä : Revista de Humanidades Médicas & Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia y la Tecnología
电子版ISSN：1852-4680
出版年度：2015
卷号：7
期号：2
页码：111-116
出版社：ISO-CYTE
摘要：The book The Wellness Syndrome focuses on “wellness as a moral imperative” (Cederström & Spicer, 2015, p. 4). The authors build on Alenka Zupančič’s use of the term “biomorality” based on the axiom that “a person who feels good (and is happy) is a good person; a person who feels bad is a bad person” (Zupancic, 2008, quoted in Cederström & Spicer, 2015, p. 5). Presented as the “moral demand to be happy and healthy” (Cederström & Spicer 2015, p. 5), the concept of “biomorality” is also mentioned by Slavoj Žižek in relation to the “super-ego injunction to enjoy” (Žižek, 2008, quoted in Cederström & Spicer, 2015, p. 5). The authors’ hypothesis is that wellness has become a moral obligation rather than a choice. When the drive to be healthy, happy and flexible becomes an imperative command in a society, then we are confronted with the paradox of the wellness syndrome. On the one hand, we are confronted with an idea of actively choosing to pursue health and happiness beyond external conditions as free individuals and autonomous beings who strive towards self-improvement and are “able to choose [t]he[i]r own fate” (Cederström & Spicer 2015, p. 6). On the other hand, the wellness mantra takes the form of a moral imperative, a command that does not leave any room to personal choice. It is this ambiguity between choice, chance and command that characterises the quest for wellness and generates the worst symptoms in modern citizens: an overwhelming sense of responsibility, anxiety, self-blame and guilt.
