Bodies of Democracy

Amanda Machin

Amanda Machin

Bodies of Democracy

Modes of Embodied Politics

In: Edition Politik, 84

transcript-Verlag | 2021

Overview

About this book

Where are all the bodies? Political institutions are populated by living breathing human beings, who eat, sleep, gesture, desire and suffer. And yet participants of the political realm are often depicted as disembodied minds, detached and distinct from their corporeal existence. Amanda Machin considers six embodied modes of democratic politics: identification, deliberation, disagreement, protest, occupation and counsel. Drawing on diverse thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polyani, Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler, she offers an absorbing illustration of the ways that human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics, but the generative subjects of democracy.

Author information

Amanda Machin lives, works and teaches in Germany as a Professor of International Political Studies at the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany. Her research focuses upon the politics of citizenship, identity, environment, embodiment and agonistic democracy.

Bodies of Democracy

Modes of Embodied Politics

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