The Body as a Place of Resistance to the Pandemic Politics of Global Corporations: Recovering the Sensibility of the Body

Aleksandra Łukaszewicz

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Chapter 5 The Body as a Place of Resistance to the Pandemic Politics of Global Corporations: Recovering the Sensibility of the Body

In: Somapower: Somaesthetics Reads Politics

Author:

Aleksandra Łukaszewicz

Aleksandra Łukaszewicz
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 90–110

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004697805_006

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Abstract

Capillary practices of power are spreading in the contemporary form of the society of control, which was described by Gilles Deleuze in “Postscript on the Societies of Control,” where he developed the Foucauldian analysis of power relations in the disciplinary society and adjusted it to the present conjuncture. Practices of power reach individual bodies, whose movements and actions in the world are controlled by digital technologies—tracked, monitored, and formed according to the images promoted. The contemporary form of power digitally embraces each and every one of us in an entirely unprecedented way, extending over intimate and private spheres. Again, as feminists claimed in the 1970, “the private is political”; more than that: the private sphere has become public. The contemporary forms of power are exercised directly on the body and through the body as disciplinary power and biopower, to use Michel Foucault’s terms. However, the body is at the same time the ultimate site of resistance to these practices of power. This is recognized by Leszek Koczanowicz and conceptualized as somapower, drawing on Foucault’s biopower and on Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics.

The case study I examine in this chapter concerns power exercised on bodies by global corporations and somapower capable of emancipating one from the corporations’ practices of power. Then, I address the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which allowed global corporations to reach potentially all the bodies in the world through pharmaceutical corporations in cooperation with the World Health Organization, imposing mandatory vaccinations on countries. The critical response to such developments that can be understood in terms of somapower has included the revival of interest in traditional healing, the knowledge of herbs, and traditional practices (for example, using Plantago lanceolata-based infusions and syrups as anti-virus protection). These practices are firmly embedded in bodies, which are an active and integral part of persons, and represent a form of resistance to contemporary biopower by developing bodily sensibility, which is a practical aim of Shusterman’s somaesthetics. Arnold Berleant also stresses this factor in his call for recovering sensibility from capitalist abuse. In his view, sensibility should be reclaimed from the corporate takeover of images, smells, tastes, and sounds, where profit is made from the abuse of the senses. From such a perspective, the decision to listen to the body, to strengthen it through natural methods, which also calm the mind, and to develop its abilities and sensibility, preventing the corporations’ absolute control of the body, is a political decision.

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Somapower: Somaesthetics Reads Politics

Series: Studies in Somaesthetics, Volume: 8

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004697805

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 09 May 2024

Subjects
- Art History
  - Art Theory
- Philosophy
  - Aesthetics & Cultural Theory

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Chapter 5 The Body as a Place of Resistance to the Pandemic Politics of Global Corporations: Recovering the Sensibility of the Body

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Somapower: Somaesthetics Reads Politics

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