Cuerpos fantasmales en la urbe global / Ghostly bodies in the global city

RESUMEN

La fluidez se ha convertido en metáfora de una sociedad contemporánea donde, paradójicamente, la única estabilidad descansa en lo efímero, donde las formas sociales cambian antes de que se sedimenten. No obstante, en la urbe global entendida como espacio de flujos cristalizan algunas relaciones sociales - por ejemplo, el vínculo consumidor-mercancía. Esta relación social propicia la creación de una subjetividad corporalizada donde el cuerpo se ha convertido en un fin y no sólo en un medio. El cuerpo es aquí una doble entidad subjetivada (el cuerpo-consumidor) y objetivada (el cuerpo-mercancía), un ente fantasmal que deviene funcional a la sociedad de consumo.

ABSTRACT

Liquidity has become a metaphor for a contemporary society in which, paradoxically, the only stability lies in the ephemeral; social forms and identities change too quickly to become sedimented. This article argues, however, that in the global city understood as a space of flows, certain social relations - for example, the link between consumer and commodity- have crystallized. This social, economic and political relation has favored the emergence of a corporeal subjectivity in which the body is not simply a means but an end in itself. The body is approached here as a dual entity that is at once both subjective (the consumer body) and objectified (the commodified body), a ghostly entity ideally adapted to and functional in consumer society.