As modernisation processes intensified, they generated social crises that could not be easily managed. The spirit of the age during the first decades of the twentieth century was dominated by various aspects of mechanisation and the unresolved questions resulting from them. The idea of the body as efficient machine or factory became the most characteristic representation of the individual in the capitalist, industrial society and started permeating the broader popular discourse in many forms. Many viewed the machine negatively and the processes of mechanisation as a threat to our inner humanity. While the concept of ‘the body as a complex machine’ was attractive to some, many others were intimidated by the idea that ‘the vitality of the human form [was] reduced to cogs and gearwheels’.
