Techno-Prosthetic Romantic FuturismThe Body is a SlaveIsn't it interesting that Locke's definition of the human body exactly parallels that of the slave? Every man, he says, "has property in his own person." [1] Every man's body is his own personal slave. It isn't simply that Locke can't help writing as Secretary to the Carolina Proprietors. It's that bodies manifestly were property at the time he was writing, some bodies at least. Liberalism aims in part at justifying slavery. [2] Any laboring body is the personal property of some overseer. The autonomous subject holds a whip. Notes1. John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), 10. 2. In this sense there's little that is new in Neo-Liberalims. See David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-Liberalism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2005). Navigation |