List of Figures vi

Series Editors’ Preface viii

Preface ix

1 Introduction: Bodies, Affects and Their Politicisation 1

2 Dislocated by Epidermal Schemas: Skin, Race and a Proper Place for the Body 27

3 The Chafing of Bodily Regimes: Skin and the Corporeal Model of the Ego 49

4 Bodies, Affects and Their Passionate Forms: Animal Phobias and the Topologies of Bodily and Psychic Space 70

5 The Worldliness of Unconscious Processes: The Repressive and Distributive Functions of the Unconscious 91

6 The Transference of Affect: The Communicative Function of the Unconscious 113

7 Crazy about Their Bodies: The Art-work of Sharon Kivland and the Politics of the Female Body 136

8 Conclusion: Bodies, Affects, Politics 158

References 179

Index 192

Bodily regimes seek to organise and control bodies. To do so, they create various schemas that render the body identifiable and knowable. Schemas associated with blood and skin, for example, enable bodies to be assigned to proper places and then policed if they appear out of place. In the face of uncertainty over the body, the policing of bodies can become oppressive and brutal. Politics, then, emerges as a struggle against oppressive bodily regimes.

But what if bodies are governed by more than one bodily regime? Uncertainties associated with bodies proliferate, and struggles against bodily regimes emerge from the clash between bodily regimes. This book seeks to understand the coexistence of bodily regimes and the politics that emerge from the clash between them. It shows how affects are captured by these struggles. And in these struggles, Bodies, Affects, Politics sees the possibility of living bodies differently.