Access to the Elysian Fields: amplified health promotion and enhancement technologies in search of longevity (and immortality)

Abstract

In this article, we discuss enhancement technologies and their goal to sell the possibility (actual or virtual) of keeping and providing appearances of youth, longevity and even immortality for human beings as a construction model of the notion of self. We employ the idea of 'amplified health promotion' in the sense of intensification of discourses supporting healthy behaviours and also as a photographic allegory, in the sense of amplifying its image in order to allow a closer view of the political, ideological and mercantile details of its proposals. Based on a typology of the anti-ageing sciences, proposed by John Vincent as cosmetic, medical, biological and immortalist, we deal with the latter two and their implications. Finally, we propose an analytical focus on the subject, emphasizing biopolitical strategies to deal with human finitude through preemptive approaches with the support of hyper-prevention, and the search of a kind of happiness as personal self-fulfillment that needs enhancement technologies to be reached.