BODY POLITIC(S)
BODY POLITIC(S) researches the historical foundations of the nexus of bodies and state, and the importance of material considerations for abstract political thinking from the birth of the modern state to the birth of modernity (1500-1800). The project studies the entanglement of the body with the emergence of the modern state, that is, with ideas and practices of the political in early modern Europe. It examines the historical relationship of abstract ideas (the state, liberty, laws) to concrete matter (flesh, sex, birth, death) in politics. The project tracks continuities, ruptures and change, and the entanglement of the local with the global.
We will investigate how early modern people made sense of the relationship of the individuals’ needs, concerns, and bodies to the state. We are particularly interested in understanding the early modern relationship of the local to the global and of the national to the international through material and bodily considerations. In addition, the project aims to widen what is considered the “source corpus” in the history of ideas and wants to engage with “great thinkers” as well as medicinal treatises and travel literature or “lower” literature and aims to enrich the field with a global and a gender perspective. The aim is to reach a better understanding of the material and bodily foundations of early modern political thinking and to better perceive the history and foundations of the modern state.
