Civilised Bodies Redux: Seams in the Cyborg

This essay describes some limitations to the civilising process, more specifically, to developing and maintaining a ‘technological habitus.’ After a brief review of Freud, Elias and Foucault, theoretical issues of tensions between mind–body and society are further developed. This is followed by an analysis of the habitus required to function in technological environments and tensions between mind–body and the social organisation of a particular technology – the car. The conclusion locates mind-bodies and health in contemporary macro-social temporal contexts.