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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