Body Politic – Biopolitik – Körperpolitik

Eine begriffsgeschichtliche Rekonstruktion der Body Politics

Abstract

English abstract: This article explores the connection of body and politics as it is captured in the idea of body politics. Therefore the text first traces the notion of body politics back to the tradition of the concept of body politic. In the history of political thought the changing meanings and usages of the con‐ cept indicate different ideas of understanding society, power and the relation between individuals and collectives. The body as metaphor in political history has yet to be examined with respect to the historicity of the body. The new social movements in the 1970s, first and foremost the feminist movement, ‘in‐ vented’ body politics as a way to both criticize politics and the control of the (female) body and its reproductive capacities and to create a new notion of the political as well as activist politics. At the same time Michel Foucault de‐ veloped the concept of biopolitics which later has been used by others to refer to the state and how it regulates and monitors the individual as well as col‐ lective bodies. Now it was the concrete material body which came to the fore in theoretical analysis as well as political activism. Feminism aimed at trans‐ forming the understanding of the political by calling the attention to the bodily aspects of power and politics. Body history is itself an effect of body politics but it also opens up new perspectives on the body as a crucial dimension of social change.