Paleolithic gym club: devices and bodies in contemporary fitness

Abstract

In this article the author discusses the artificiality of gym devices and how they can simulate a reality that can be associated to some ancient torture devices. She proposes that a fitness device replaces the original environment and transforms a body. However this subject common in gym clubs can become a kind of antisubject opposed to the freedom of moves and able to present reprehended gestures. She also highlights the triple purpose of gym exercises: the muscular power, the acquisition of welfare and the conquer of an appearance imposed by stetical canons. In the last part of her paper, the gym club seems to be specially a place for human gesture recovery in its primary nature, able to receive those “unlimited generalizations” that marked the passage from homo faber to homo sapiens. In short a gym club is like a paleolithic environment.