Bodies of Democracy: Modes of Embodied Politics

Political institutions are populated by living, breathing, desiring, suffering, ageing human beings. And yet these institutions are frequently depicted as if they were designed and indwelled by disembodied minds, detached and distinct from their corporeal existence. Paradoxically, the political bodies in which citizens and their representatives congregate and communicate are depicted as forums in which human bodies are largely irrelevant. I argue in this book that theories and models of democracy can be challenged and improved by greater attentiveness to the embodiment of its political agents. Referring to an eclectic set of empirical examples and drawing on various bodies of theoretical literature, particularly the work of Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Simone de Beauvoir, the book investigates the bodies of democracy, grappling with their various performances and illustrating their capability to rupture the political realm and any reductive account of their own existence. By standing attentively or turning away, by moving or staying, by eating or starving, by dancing or wailing, embodied humans can challenge stereotypes, inspire protests, rupture conventions and provoke change. My aim is to show that it is as embodied creatures that we interact in the political realm, and to challenge the dualism between political subjectivity and lived body.