Notes on the Politics of an Expanded Body

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Varvia, Christina. 2022. Notes on the Politics of an Expanded Body. Parse Journal, 15, ISSN 2002-0511 [Article]

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Starting from a philosophical provocation that reimagines the human body not as a distinct object but rather as an expanded field where matter flows through a series of threshold conditions, this essay follows the political aftermath of the conception of an expanded body and situates it within feminist and posthuman theory. The effects of such thinking demand a redrawing of biopolitical theory, as well as suggesting a collapse between the fields of human rights and environmental rights. If we are to consider every material bit that is ever consumed, inhaled and excreted by a human body as a fundamental part of the body, then violence against human subjects needs to be rethought: any attack to the environments that sustains human life needs to be addressed within the human rights discourse and as part of any biopolitical commitment to protect human life. This reshuffle helps us address the complexity of the politics of liveability, but also offers new challenges in making claims and demands new strategies of political activation against violent practices. The essay suggests that thinking with scale—from the molecular to the planetary—and using border epistemologies will become key methods in addressing the work against violence in the posthuman era.

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