Flayed Bodies and the Re-turn of the Flesh: Foucault and Contemporary Gendered Bodies

Abstract

Foucault’s genealogical approach to power is vital to understanding the historico-cultural contingencies of how the ‘subject’ as one who is (re)produced via discourse comes to be. In particular, Foucauldian approaches have been taken up by feminist theorists as a means for grappling with how the categories of ‘woman’ and ‘man’ work in terms of discipline and, latterly, biopolitical subjugation.0F1 This article offers an intervention into the field of feminist Foucauldian theory with an attention to the body in the contemporary moment. In particular, we consider the interface between the body and the social via what we term ingestible somato-political technologies, and how these constitute gendered subjectivity. Such technologies go beyond the biopolitical internalisation of power structures: they are characterised by the literal consumption, absorption, and integration of social and political control. Through a focus on three ingestible sites of power (assisted reproductive technology or ART; nootropics; hormonal treatments for trans* folk), we propose that we are currently in a pharmacopornographic society.