Skip Nav Destination
Perverse Modernities: A Series Edited by Jack Halberstam and Lisa Lowe
Movement and the Ordering of Freedom: On Liberal Governances of Mobility
By
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-0-8223-7575-3
Publication date:
2015
Book Chapter
The Fence That “Ill Deserves the Name of Confinement”: Locomotion and the Liberal Body
-
Published:February 2015
This chapter analyzes the role of free movement in early liberal thought. Focusing on the work of Hobbes, Lock, Blackstone and Stanton, it argues that motion was a central element in the conceptualization of the liberal idea of freedom. Second, it shows movement was the privileged mode by which the liberal subject was embodied. Moreover, movement was the corporeal condition for rationality. This centrality of movement shows that the figure of the abstract, universal subject is a later incarnation of liberal subjectivity and is not integral to liberalism as such. It also explains why some groups of people, whose movement...
This content is only available as PDF.
You do not currently have access to this chapter.
Advertisement