Author Description

Disembodiment Examines Self-destruction, Self-injury, And Radical Self-endangerment As Forms Of Action That Express The Injustices And Indignities Of The Life Conditions Of Impoverished, Dispossessed, And Dominated Peoples. Banu Bargu Troubles The Dominant Approach That Treats These Acts As Individual Pathologies, Cries For Help, And Signs Of Despair To Suggest That They Should Also Be Read As Unconventional Performances Of Resistance And Refusal That Are Erased, Marginalized, And Distorted By Metanarratives Of History As Progress And Agency As Freedom. As A Work In Global Critical Theory Whose Normative Compass Is The Suffering Body, Disembodiment Brings Together Corporeal Enactments Of Defiance From The Global South With Major Thinkers Of Western Modernity And Prominent Critical-theoretical Traditions Of The Twentieth Century. Moving From Historical Precedents That Include Suicides Of Enslaved Africans, Hunger Strikes Of Woman Suffragists, And Gandhian Fasting Practices To Such Recent Examples As The Self-incineration Of Mohammed Bouazizi, The Hunger And Thirst Strikes In The Maze And Guantánamo, And The Lip-sewing Practices Of Migrants And Asylum Seekers In Detention Centers And Border Zones Of The West Today, Bargu Takes The Reader On An Unsettling Journey That Traces The Emergence Of A Repertoire Out Of The Violent Forfeiture Of Bodily Integrity And The Undoing Of The Body. Ultimately, Disembodiment Offers A Bold Materialist Theory Of Corporeal Agency That Unfolds A Stark Critique Of The Present And Upholds The Body's Powers As Fundamentally Rebellious And Ultimately Undomesticatable-- Provided By Publisher.