Foucault’s concept of the body and the limits of political theory

Abstract

This article deals with the links between the descriptions of the body in Foucault's genealogical writings and contemporary political criticism. It proposes that Foucault 's descriptions provide a basis for a political criticism that reduces political domination to institutional power exerted upon the body, and political freedom to a struggle against the value-based meanings underpinning them. It also highlights the influence of Foucault ’s critical propositions upon a number of central theoreticians in contemporary political thought. These include Shusterman, in his creation of a new philosophical stance some esthetics examining the contingencies of the individual's bodily experience under verbal and institutional structures; McWhorter, in the creation of a value-based opposition to the array of institutional meanings by expanding the notion of the politics of enjoyment; and Butler, in releasing the body from the passive function given it in philosophy and modem sciences, and in creating political communities based on undermining gender-based identities.