16-18 Dec 2020 AIX-MARSEILLE, SOUSSE, ISTANBUL (France)

Presentation

CORMED: Reseach School on Gender

France - Turkey - Tunisia

 

BODIES UNDER SURVEILLANCE / MOBILIZED BODIES /

EXPOSED BODIES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

TOOLS OF RESISTANCE

16-17-18 December 2020

 

In view of the fact that the vulnerability of our bodies and their dependence on the material and social environment is dramatically accentuated during the COVID-19 pandemic, this call for participation is especially interested in the place occupied by minoritized bodies during times of crisis, whether in the past or today. Three approaches concerning the treatment of these bodies will be studied within the framework of this Research School : surveillance, mobilization and exposure of these bodies.

Bodies under surveillance: the surveillance of bodies has a long history; as a case in point, Michel Foucault explored the modern perception of this issue, using the example of imprisonment. From the vantage point of his pioneering studies, the cultural continuity of the practice of “rehabilitation” in places of educative, disciplinary and political confinement in colonial times during totalitarian eras has been further investigated by historians. Detention and the surveillance of women along with the invisibilization of “deviant” bodies as a common denominator, multisecular in Mediterranean cultures, have been explored in the social sciences and humanities and have resulted in numerous publications. Which archives and which legacies, whether by their presence or by their absence, prompt – or not – the recall, the demonstration or the reflection regarding the continuity of this characteristic tropism with respect to contemporary resurgences which allow one to measure unforseen collateral effects of the pandemic ?

Mobilized bodies: the mobilization of bodies responds to contradictory sollicitations of our time. Incited and claimed by women and LGBTQI minorities, many different types of bodies lead towards a forceful struggle extending itself via different kinds of resistance over the past two centuries, imposing itself in the public space. Moreover, bodies are also the testimony of all sorts of forced displacement which reveals ruthless and brutal manifestations of globalization together with social and political violence which accompanies advanced capitalism and new forms of employment. These bodies are nonetheless sources of hope, agency and opposition to different practices while, at the same time, becoming and symbolizing a boundary and an object of traffic.

Exposed bodies: Nonetheless, bodies circulate and, in this liberating period marked by the lifting of lockdown, they become exemplary and a source of inspiration. The place of bodies as political and artistic objects-subjects responds to the tensions and contradictions of our times. Hidden, revealed and bearing traces of its trajectory, this role of the body becomes apparent and visible and its alternative and multiple forms invade the web and the media. How does one think about distance and proximity of bodies, how does one construct bodies with respect to the norm, how does one produce collective bodies which cultivate political commitment and changes in representation within this tragedy but also with reference to the possible in the Mediterranean and in the overall world ?

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