Jan Pezda
Spas as institutional unconsciousness of bourgeoisie
Spa is a word that today evokes a variety of different places, institutions, facilities and treatments: old-fashioned monumental spa towns and remote spa resorts in woody foothills, seaside hotels with beaches and beauty parlours, and all kinds of wellness treatments that promise to remedy health, boost mental well-being, relieve stress and deliver rejuvenating effects. Spas offer transformative change, either permanent or temporary, and lure tourists seeking relief from pain, anxiety or boredom. In the process, they imply a blending of therapeutic effects and preventive treatments with relaxed fun and pampering. Spas have been permeating the imagination of people as worldly oases of idleness, luxury, debauchery and licentious sexual pleasures since the 19th century. They connote much of the touristic idea of being "outside" or "away" and of the racy and gourmet world in which one temporarily abides by rules and rhythms that are the opposite of the boring, mind-numbing home routines full of maxims, dietary restrictions and sexual norms enforced by bourgeois morality. And so with the burgeoning of "hardened" capitalist modernity, inland and seaside spas are beginning to embody a relieving outlet from the annoying ordinariness of the prudish bourgeois life. The gourmet indulgence, "productive" idleness, sexual harassment or casual sex in the spa seem to be practices subverting the bourgeois moral code with which the prudish bourgeoisie struggles, but in reality they are obscenities (perversions) relegated to the dark basement - the unconscious (Žižek) - of the institution of bourgeois morality, which is not spoken of aloud and which covertly underlies this institution and the Bürgerlichkeit system in general.
Keywords: spas - bourgeois morality - moral code - idleness - indulgence - subversive effect
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