The body: museum and controlled meaning

Abstract

The text develops a tour through the body as territory, speech and object of control. The author proposes three possible operations that can be developed: the study of the body’s memory through its signs; the historical comprehension of the practice of the body starting from its prolongations, and the analysis of the conditions for the practice of power in the domination-freedom tension. The author states that the three related dimensions (body as place, as speech and as power) are not independent from each other, because they form a complex system of relations that explain and conceal the meanings of the body links in the social level. Finally, the article proposes that the body, seen as a stage, constitutes the passage point for all policies whichever their origin, since it is in the body that the whole of the social network is installed and projected, being the main goal for government and its decisions.