CROSS-CULTURAL REACTIONS TO AND STUDIES OF BODY POLITICS

A major challenge to racial body politics came from within the feminist movement. In the 1970s, Black, Latina, Native American, and Asian feminists insisted that an inclusive feminism examine and redress the historic evaluations of bodily difference that structured oppression of women according to race. Women of color objected to the narrow construction of gender politics by white feminists, and they moved to include the differences that race, class, and sexuality make in women’s position in society. The welfare mothers’ movement, radical lesbians of color, and black feminist theorists were among those to call attention to the ways in which race inflected feminism. The 1981 anthology This Bridge Called My Back captured the physical nature of the social and cultural experience of women of color who tried to bridge the gap between nationalist movements where sexism flourished and the feminist movement’s singular concentration on gender. The editors, Cherie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa (1942–2004) are celebrated writers, theorists, and activists, who in this influential, transformative volume brought together poetry, critical and reflective essays, and photographs of artwork by noted women of color. This Bridge Called My Back contained the first publication of Audre Lorde’s (1934–1992) essay, “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House,” which along with her essays on breaking silence and the erotic as power were crucial in forging a language of body politics for women of color and lesbian feminists. This push within the feminist movement contributed to the inclusive politics of diversity and multiculturalism in the United States.

Scholarly research on body politics was greatly influenced by French philosopher Michel Foucault ( Discipline and Punish , 1977), who used the terms “bio-power” and “anatomo-politics” to refer to the insinuation of governmental and institutional power into people’s everyday activities. He argued that such power shapes people’s subjectivity—their sense of themselves as persons. From Foucault’s point of view, disciplinary mechanisms such as prisons, as well as medical knowledge and the education system, provide the discourse, ideas, resources, and procedures through which individuals come to know who they are and through which they learn to conform to the social and political order. What begins as externally imposed discipline becomes internalized, such that individuals become their own disciplinarians. Even though Foucault’s work represents human subjectivity as caught in the thrall of discourses that impose meaning and shape action, inherent in body politics is the optimistic possibility that by changing the body’s relationship to power, one might change the expression of power in society. Using the concept of body politics, scholars have studied the status of women and racial minorities, and somatic or body norms generated in particular cultures (and individuals’ appropriation or rejection of them), as well the regulation of the body through hygiene, medicine, law, and sports. The study of European colonial policies and practices has been a particularly prolific area of scholarship on body politics.

Colonialism produced body politics intended to create acquiescent subjects, and it was, in part, successful. But colonialism also inspired resistance and revolution. The bodies of colonial subjects built the colonial infrastructure, fueled its economy, and bought its products. Clothing, in specified styles and patterns, and soaps and oils advertised and sold by colonizers pulled colonized bodies into the moral and aesthetic spheres of the colonizers. Colonized people were often treated as disease vectors, necessitating residential segregation and public health programs to ensure the health and well-being of the colonizers. Colonial administrations grouped colonized people according to race and tribe and used these distinctions to control their access to rights and resources. In some cultures, body politics took a supernatural turn, as the spirits of colonizers were believed to take over the bodies of former colonial subjects. This spirit possession highlights cultural memory and the embodiment of political power. Anticolonial movements rejected colonial rules of deference, fought for political sovereignty, revived older demonstrations of respect, and instituted new policies and practices to regulate the human body.