Beyond Pleasure

Asceticism, so it is argued in this volume, is a modern category. The ubiquitous cult of the body, of fitness and diet equally evoke the ongoing success of ascetic practices and beliefs. Nostalgic memories of hardship and discipline in the army, youth movements or boarding schools remain as present as the fashionable irritation with the presumed modern-day laziness. In the very texture of contemporary culture, age-old asceticism proves to be remarkably alive. Old ascetic forms were remoulded to serve modern desires for personal authenticity, an authenticity that disconnected asceticism in the course of the nineteenth century from two traditions that had underpinned it since classical antiquity: the public, republican austerity of antiquity and the private, religious asceticism of Christianity. Exploring various aspects such as the history of gender and the body, aesthetics, consumption, or of political culture in several European countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Russia and Belgium), the authors show that modern asceticism is deeply ambivalent with its focus on self-realisation while the influence of classical and religious discourses continues.

Leen Van Molle teaches contemporary social history at the University of Leuven. Her main research interests are in rural and gender history. She has recently published on Belgian women entrepreneurs, the history of allotment gardening and an overview of recent research on rural history in the North Sea area (Brepols Turnhout, 2006).

Kaat Wils teaches contemporary cultural history at the University of Leuven. Her research focuses on the gendered history of medicine and the human sciences in the nineteenth and twentieth century and on nineteenth-century positivism and intellectual culture (Amsterdam University Press, 2005).

Evert Peeters received his PhD in history from the University of Leuven. He is currently working as a researcher at the Centre for Historical Research and Documentation on War and Contemporary Society in Brussels. He has published on Lebensreform and body culture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century (Bert Bakker, 2008).