Refrained flesh: Building bodies with Deleuze and Guattari

The present study is a Deleuzian analysis of the transformative capacities of the practice of bodybuilding. The introductory chapter examines the role of repetition in the practice of bodybuilding and the ways in which repetitive structures become instrumental in converting a recreational weight lifter into a competitive bodybuilder. The second chapter details parallels between the mechanics of bodybuilding and Deleuze's redefinition of masochism. Chapter three maps the concepts "rhizome" and "plateau" to demonstrate how these concepts apply to bodybuilding. Chapter four rereads the concept of the "body without organs" to substantiate a crucial transformative juncture in the bodybuilder's developmental trajectory. In the fifth chapter Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "becoming" is deployed to illustrate the stages of transformation the bodybuilder undegoes and to describe the fundamental reconfigurations that result from the processes of competition and judgment. The concluding chapter shifts ethical issues in bodybuilding away from questions of moral judgment and recasts ethical debates around a Deleuzian/Spinozist notion of ethics suggesting the practice of bodybuilding be evaluated in terms of what it enables a body to do.