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Christin Campbell, John Cabot University, ItalyAbstract
Women’s bodies are a political necessity and an inconvenience. Paradoxically, women’s reproductive work is necessary for the continuation of the modern state and state power, power from which women themselves have historically been excluded. Women’s own bodily sovereignty disavows and threatens the State, ideas rooted in our western imaginations through classic texts. From Hippocrates and Aristotle to Galen, the male obsession with managing and policing the female body, denying its full humanity and autonomy, continues to inform modern patriarchal governance and the political processes it supports. States know that only by policing the female body, considering her body to be half a male body, can they solidify their imperialist, transnational power and authoritarian agendas. Political and social opposition to the existence of the female body both as a political corpus and an individual person, to the value of woman beyond her physical body, are rooted in the medical, scientific and cultural values that still draw blood from the ancient Mediterranean world. Dictatorial and even democratic governments gain oxygen through compulsory heteronormativity and heterosexuality, and the denial of the full bodily autonomy and sexuality of women. This paper examines how classical ideas of women’s bodies support the current body politic, establishing hierarchical political structures through biological analogy. Without facing and reworking our unexamined learning from classical texts, we will continue to embolden threats to democracy and those State actors whose imperial power grabs insist on the relegation of the female body to the home.
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Conference: ECAH2026Stream: Humanities - Sexuality, Gender, Families
This paper is part of the ECAH2026 Conference Proceedings (View)
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