Hugh Adam Biopolitics and the Body - WordPress.com€¦ · fictitious equivalent to the 1984 Bhopal...
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Hugh Adam
Biopolitics and the BodyBiopolitics
‘[Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri] see the economic dimensionof Empire as a new stage of global capitalist production in whichall states and regions of the world are integrated and connected…Today this includes not only the constitution of manpower butalso the production of bodies, intellects and affects.’
(Thomas Lemke, ‘Capitalism and the Living Multitude: Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’, 2011, p. 66)
Rusty Mirage (Kiluanji Kia Henda)
The figure of the body within Kiluanji Kia Henda’s ‘Rusty Mirage’ exists
solely as a site of production. By the final image of the piece only the
product of the workers’ labour remains, the figures themselves having
exited the frame upon the completion of their work. In this Henda brings
attention to the invisible nature of migrant workers, their brief
appearance in silhouette emphasises their role as an anonymous mass,
bodies which will provide a labour output before moving on.
Homeworkers (Margaret Harrison)
In Margaret Harrison’s ‘Homeworkers’ the body retains its place as a site of
production. However, Harrison’s reduction of the body to just the hands is
emblematic of the dehumanising effects of the exploitative practices of the
companies for which these women work. The items Harrison has attached to
her canvas, produced through this labour, have been repurposed from
commodities with a purchase value to representations of the hours of labour
involved in their production and the compensation the workers received for
that labour. So, too, has Harrison repurposed palm reading, using the lines on
the hands in her piece not as a map to the future, but a survey of the history
of the struggle for worker’s rights.
Animal’s People (Indra Sinha)As in Harrison’s ‘Homeworkers,’ the body serves as a representation of the
effects of industry within Indra Sinha’s novel. However, the focus of Animal’s
People is, instead, the victims of industrial accidents, as Sinha creates a
fictitious equivalent to the 1984 Bhopal disaster in his text. Through the body
of the text’s protagonist, Animal, who is forced to walk on all fours, his back
having been disfigured by the effects of the factory explosion, Sinha evokes
the image of the grotesque body. The grotesque comes to be representative
of the slow violence of industrial capitalism as Animal and his people continue
to struggle with the effects of the disaster and fight for justice decades after
that cataclysmic night.
United Enemies (Thomas Schütte) Thomas Schütte’s ‘United Enemies’ sculptures employ
the grotesque aesthetic as a representation of
political corruption exposed following the 1992 Italian
general election. The body here becomes a site of
conflict: the bound figures present an image of the
uneasy alliances upon which political power is built,
and the instability of these power structures is
revealed in the precarious stilts upon which they
stand.
Whose Utopia? (Cao Fei)Cao Fei’s short film presents a rejection of the reduction of bodies to either
sources of production, as seen in ‘Rusty Mirage,’ or representations of the
history of labour, as in ‘Homeworkers.’ Instead, in ‘Whose Utopia?’, we are
allowed an insight into the interiority of the factory’s workers, as Fei tasks
them with creating pieces centred around the themes of dreams, ideals,
hometown, reality and future. The contrast of the performing figures, acting
upon the factory floor, to those of their working colleagues around them is
not only indicative of the freedom of the imagination within the confines of
repetitive manual labour but also frees the body from the shackles of
production, revealing it as a site of expression.
Taxi (Khaled Alkhamissi)Bodily expression, however, remains constrained by economic, state and
religious institutions. Thomas Lemke explains how, ‘Biopolitics is not the
expression of a sovereign will but aims at the administration and regulation
of life processes on the level of populations’ (Biopolitics: An Advanced
Introduction, 2011, p. 4), and this is evident in Khaled Alkhamissi’s novel,
Taxi, as a cleric preaches: ‘Today adornment means nakedness. Girls are
wearing T-shirts and trousers as though they were wearing nothing’ (2008, p.
30).
The Quilt (Ismat Chughtai)‘There was a peculiar noise again. In the dark Begum Jaan’s quilt was once
again swaying like an elephant. “Allah! Ah!...” I moaned in a feeble voice.’
(Ismat Chugtai, ‘The Quilt,’ in Manushi 110, 1999)
Within Ismat Chughtai’s short story, ‘The Quilt,’ the hidden body, veiled
beneath the titular item, comes to represent the resistance the
administration and regulation of life processes faces. As Chughtai’s text
depicts a lesbian relationship in 1940s India, confined to the secrecy of the
bedroom, the hidden body epitomises the push of non-heteronormative
sexualities to the peripheries by societal pressure and also the secrecy
sought by the practitioners of those sexualities.
Bibliography
Alkhamissi, Khaled. Taxi. 2006. Doha: Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing, 2011.
Chughtai, Ismat. ‘The Quilt’ 1942. Manushi 110 (1999): P. 36-40.
Lemke, Thomas. Biopolitics: An Advanced Introduction. New York: NYU Press, 2011.
Sinha, Indra. Animal’s People. 2007. London: Pocket Books, 2008.
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