Reflection Paper: Throughout history, there have been numerous constructions of the body leading to different conceptualizations of the embodied self. As meanings of the body changed through time, so did the diverse discourses on what reflects the social body. For instance, Plato argued that the body was a ‘tomb’, while Descartes believed that the body is a ‘machine’. Bodies are different, and the ideologies, morals, and values associated with it vary in each culture. For instance, Synnott argues that “social scientists have only recently begun to research the body as a social phenomenon” and that essays with arguments like “the social body constrains the perception and the construction of the physical body” by Mary Douglas contribute to the overarching themes in the discourse of the body. A reflection of the key readings from the “Western History of the Body” module show that there are diverse scholarly discourses on the body and associated ideologies, values, and constructed realities.
There have been different movements on the core aspects of the body. For instance, the traditional acetic idea of the body as an enemy, and in this sense, the achievement of dominion over the body was perceive as the achievement of divine fulfilment. For instance, Saint Theresa of Avila is known for her controversial martyrdom and the advice she gave sisters of her order: “The first thing we have to do, and that at once, is to rid ourselves of love for this body of ours”. However, conquering the body was not enough, and hence the need to pursue interior mortification. This involved going against the natural emotional needs and desires to overcome the self. For example, Saint Margaret-Mary Alacoque is known for doing unnatural things such as eating a sick man’s diarrhea and using her tongue to clean vomit. In a similar fashion, Saint Angela of Fuligno is known for drinking the water she had used to clean lepers, and discussing the experience as flooding their bodies with ‘sweetness’ (Synott 91). In the 20th century, the focus shifted to ‘the body beautiful’ in America, while in Germany the politicization of the body took the lead through Nazism and Nazi destruction of physical and ethnic deviants.
The Nazi destruction of ‘lives not worth living’ is explored in detail by Robert Proctor in The Destruction of “Lives Not Worth Living”. The euthanasia operation was Adolf Hitler’s way of ridding Germany of ineffective bodies and biological traits that he believed would make the German population inferior. In this operation, more that 700, 000 ‘patients’ had been killed through ‘assisted death’, which paved way for the destruction of homosexuals, Jews, communists, Gypsies, prisoners of war and slavs. Euthanasia was perceived by the Nazis as a means of cutting costs. The banality of the program was horrendous, as the murders of tens of thousands of mentally sick were killed. People with physical disability were not spared either, as the Nazi concept of heathy and diseased races caught on. Not surprisingly, Jews and other minority races were likened to ‘parasites’ or ‘cancer’.
In addition to the politicization of the body, scholarly discourse has also ventured into the relationship between bodies and capitalism. For instance, Marx argued in Estranged Labor that “so much does the objectification appear as loss of the object that the worker is robbed of the objects most necessary not only for his life but for his work” (72). In the capitalist society, laborers are alienated from the process of labor, the product and eventually becomes a slave of their product. In the current world, many people live in capitalist societies where capitalists control the means of production and even the exchange value for products of labor, such that when people become independent they are forced to seek employment at one point or another due to frustrations. Without a doubt, the central role that capitalism plays in sustaining workers well-being sparked advancement in scientific-technical revolution of the production process. In this context, the body is reduced to “the level of an instrument in the production process”, and the development into treating workers as machines, and thus the scientific study of management (Braverman 119)
Undoubtedly, there are diverse arguments, beliefs, and theories about the social body. An individual is rarely in control of their own body, and many factors in the social, economic, and political spheres dictate certain related meanings. For instance, the politicization of the body as evident in Hitler’s conception of “lives not worth living” demonstrates just how much the idea of the self is not private. In addition, the construction of the scientific body through scientific studies of the worker shows how the diversity in the body discourse has shaped identities over time.
