Amanda Machin brings the body back into democratic politics, arguing that human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics, but the generative subjects of democracy.

Where are all the bodies? Political institutions are populated by living, breathing human beings, who eat, sleep, gesture, desire and suffer. And yet participants of the political realm are often depicted as disembodied minds, detached and distinct from their corporeal existence. Amanda Machin considers six embodied modes of democratic politics: representation, deliberation, disagreement, protest, occupation and counsel. Drawing on diverse thinkers such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Michael Polanyi, Simone de Beauvoir, Donna Haraway and Judith Butler, she offers an absorbing illustration of the ways human bodies are not only the disciplined objects of politics, but the generative subjects of democracy.

»Eine fundierte Auseinandersetzung mit wichtigen Theoriedebatten der letzten Jahrzehnte. Brisante Fragen der Gegenwart, wie die Frage nach der Krise der Repräsentation oder die nach der Legitimität von Deliberation, werden engagiert aufgegriffen und aus feministischer und postmoderner Sicht kritisch reflektiert.«

Autorentext
Amanda Machin is a professor of sociology at the University of Agder, Norway. Her research focuses on radical democracy and environmental politics.