Throughout the fin de siècle, "energy" was a buzzword that was used far beyond the boundaries of the sciences to negotiate the formative scope as well as limits of Western modernity. The human body was positioned at the center of the visualization of this enigmatic drive of all movement in discourses on labor and economics, physical culture, sport, art, and literature. It was through the body that this all-pervading and conditioning physical principle as well as its perceptual qualities were to be made tangible. This volume is dedicated to these "energetic bodies." The transdisciplinary individual contributions trace body scenarios of force and energy over the course of history from 1800 to the peak phase around 1900 and up to the present.

• Content 6
• Acknowledgements 8
• Sex, Drugs and Bicycles. Alfred Jarry’s “Le surmâle” and the Aesthetics of Energy-Enhancing Strength 10
• Force of Gravity/Power of Labour—or: Heaving Stones 24
• Bodies, Suspended. Eadweard Muybridge and the Allure of “Unsupported Transit” 44
• Embodied Experiences of Force. Carabin’s Anthropomorphic Fauteuils and the “Muscular Sense” in late 19^th Century Med 58
• Visualising the Muscular Force. Charcot’s and Féré’s Approaches to Exploring the Neurophysiology of Movement in Hysteria Patient 82
• The Feeling of Forces. Robert Mayer’s and Friedrich Nietzsche’s Physics and Metaphysics of the Body 104
• Movement, Muscle, Matter. Jef Lambeaux’s Wrestling Groups of the 1880s and 1890s 124
• A Fix of Energy. Joseph Beuys Boxing 144
• Body Sculpting. Paradessent Strategies in Contemporary Art 158
• Sweat, Strain and Surplus in Mika Rottenberg’s “Tropical Breeze” 174
• Authors 190
• Credits 194