Description
For several decades now, a ‘turn to materialism’ has been announced across the social sciences that makes epistemological, ontological, and methodological claims about the nature of materialism. In particular and of relevance for an IR audience, I’m interested in the ways in which ‘the global’ structures the turn to materialism, and I do this through a discussion of how ‘the body’ has been conceptualized and materialized as a core concept through which this question has been explored by feminist, queer, and anti-racist thought, as well as for the work that ‘the body’ does in stabilizing configurations of the state, epistemology, and political power, pace Epstein. The relationship between ‘the body’ and the ‘global’ both historically and contemporarily will be examined with particular reference to the work of Yusoff, Povinelli, Ferreira da Silva, and Wynter as part of a broader project that askes what the relationship between bodies and embodiment, the state, and world order look like that was built on the theory and theorizing of bodies and embodiment and its relation to power from those who carry with them the legacies of exclusion from, or violent inclusion in, modern political subjectivity and the figure of the human.
