Body Politics

Bodies matter. They take form and flesh forth in ways that are consequential to the formation of the social, the economic, and the political. Highly indebted to feminist, queer, and antiracist traditions, scholars across disciplines in the social sciences and humanities have called attention to the significance of bodies and modes of embodiment to the workings of power. Social worlds centre around particular bodies—some bodies are desired, while others are stigmatized. Bodies determine the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, and they regulate the normative modes of interpersonal conduct that govern everyday life. Similarly, the subtle acts of governance deployed by various political regimes remain anchored to disciplinary techniques that principally act on and through bodies. For much of the past century—and up to the present moment—democratic forms of governance have predominantly characterized the framework of political authority underpinning various disciplinary modalities regulating bodies. Yet, despite the various liberal and illiberal political claims made on them, bodies remain difficult to delimit. They are porous, unbounded, and entangled with other bodies and objects. They feel, collect, ingest and release things. They simultaneously define and defy the limits of individuality and personal autonomy. Indeed, bodies are malleable in ways that make them difficult to pin down, and they produce differential relations that often supersede the totalizing claims of disciplinary power. This conference, thus, calls upon graduate students to re-examine the analytical, political, and ethical dimensions of body-politics. How might we reconceptualize the social, cultural, economic, and political lives of bodies today?
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