The Biopolitics of Useful Film: Making Able Bodies through Film in Late Socialist Romania
Rezumat
Abstract: In this article, we examine the ways in which useful films produced in late socialist Romania contributed to the production of collective imaginaries regarding health and ability, which in turn normalized healthist and ableist standards. Drawing on an analysis of six educational films produced between 1969 and 1983, we show how the promotion of individual bodily optimization was embedded within the construction of a collective aspirational horizon centered on health, ability, and productivity. These films operated biopolitically by disseminating knowledge about healthy living and by encouraging participation in rehabilitation practices following accidents and temporary disabilities. While such forms of knowledge circulation can be read as emancipatory, they were also structured through recurring narratives that took bodily or behavioral deficit as their point of departure, stigmatizing and ridiculing unhealthy, disabled, or otherwise non-normative bodies. These narrative strategies articulated conceptions of health and ability that legitimized the social exclusion of persons with chronic illnesses, permanent disabilities, or other forms of bodily difference for whom this collective aspirational horizon remained largely inaccessible.
Keywords: healthism, ableism, useful film, state socialism, biopolitics.
Bibliografie
Acknowledgment: The research presented in this paper was conducted as part of the project “Philosophy in Late Socialist Europe: Theoretical Practices in the Face of Polycrisis”, PNRR-III-C9-2022 – I8 – CF104/15.11.2022. Authors have contributed equally to this paper.
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