Embodying or resisting social normativity? A carnal inquiry into exercise addiction experiences

Abstract

Exercise addiction has sparked a growing interest in the scientific and clinical literature, yet this behavioral addiction has mainly been investigated quantitatively, from a positivistic perspective. This article explores the subjective and embodied dimensions of exercise addiction, broadening current conceptions of this emerging, still unofficial mental health category. Building on carnal sociology, and through a thematic analysis of mobile interviews conducted with 17 self-proclaimed “exercise addicts” from Canada, this article examines the interrelations between the embodiment of exercise addiction and the normative social elements at stake in the shaping of the category, providing insights on how exercise is experienced as an addiction. Results show that most participants describe this addiction as “soft” and “positive”, highlighting the virtues of exercising. However, their bodily accounts also reveal a suffering body, bringing forth the vices related to excessive exercising. Participants also put in relation the quantifiable and the sensible body, revealing the porous boundaries of this construct: exercise addiction can sometimes be regulatory in certain contexts and counternormative in others. Thus, it appears that “exercise addicts” enact various contemporary normative requirements, which vary from asceticism and body-ideals but also to the phenomenon of social and temporal acceleration. We argue that exercise addiction questions how certain behaviors, deemed potentially problematic, illustrate the tensions and complex articulations between embodying and resisting social normativity.