Commissioned Book Review: Amanda Machin, Bodies of Democracy: Modes of Embodied Politics
| Author | Theodore Stone |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/14789299221136062 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Review |
Political Studies Review
2023, Vol. 21(1) NP7 –NP8
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
1136062PSW0010.1177/14789299221136062Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2022
Commissioned Book Review
Bodies of Democracy: Modes of
Embodied Politics by Amanda Machin.
by transcript Verlag, Germany, 2022, £111.59
(€100, $110), ISBN 9783839449233 (copy
provided by De Gruyter; UK distribution
partner, available through Columbia University
Press in North America)
The presence of physical, living bodies and their
respective roles in political participation con-
tinues to be a contentious area for democratic
theory and wider political thought. Although
embodiment and the use of physical space con-
tinues to play a profound role in our contem-
porary p olitical spheres – as exemplified by
protests from groups such as Extinction Rebellion
and the various roles and actions of disability
rights activists – conceptions of political and
democratic thought are criticised for abandoning
conceptions of embodiment altogether in favour
of ideal theories and disembodied rationality.
In her new book, Bodies of Democracy:
Modes of Embodied Politics, Amanda Machin
seeks to highlight the importance of embodi-
ment in democratic politics. To achieve this,
Machin explores six different embodied modes
of politics and how they impact democratic
theory, these being representation, deliberation,
disagreement, protest, occupation, and counsel.
Each chapter draws upon a widely resea rched
range of texts and sources, including the works
of prominent scholars of embodiment such
as Michel Foucault, Maurice Merleau-Ponty,
Donna Haraway and Judith Butler.
To further articulate the role and presence of
bodies in democratic politics, Machin recruits a
variety of historical and real-world examples.
In Chapter 1, Machin uses the examples of
Emmaline Pankhurst and Nomzamo Winifred
Zanyiwe Madikizela-Mandela to identify how
physical representation and performances of
identity can impact collective identities within
the political sphere; forging new collective iden-
tities of the representatives they claim to repre-
sent (p. 54), later calling on Nelson Mandela,
Greta Thunberg and Mo Farah in Chapter 3 to
highlight the demarcation of us/them distinctions
and the reshaping of collective identity through
their embodied presences.
In Chapters 4 and 5, Machin examines two
real-world examples of embodiment in demo-
cratic politics; these being the hunger strikes of
Irish Republicans (p. 111) and the Twyford
Down occupation in 1992 to protest a planned
motorway extension (p. 137). Both examples
serve to identify the importance of bodies in
social movements and protests, with the latter
paying particular heed to the idea of assembled
bodies and their collective political roles. This
is particularly helpful in providing readers with
an opportunity to envisage the use of bodies in
non-ideal democratic politics and civil disobe-
dience.
When it comes to democratic theory and its
pitfalls, Mach in is particularly critical of delib-
erative democracy, which she describes in
Chapter 2 as a way to disembody politics (p. 65),
or more specifically, as a series of approaches
that ‘commonly and problematically overlook
and undermine bodies’ and ‘gloss over the
implications and possibilities of embodiment’
(p. 78). Machin highlights four ways in which
embodiment matters to deliberation – namely,
conditions, excesses, distortions and opportuni-
ties – each of which denotes the ways bodies are
not only essential in providing opportunities for
deliberation (including simply being physically
situated), but also how they can exceed delib-
eration through the varieties of non-verbal com-
munication and habitual knowledge that people
engage in on a daily basis.
A potential critique of Machin’s approach to
deliberative democracy is that some may find
her conception of deliberative democracy as
mischaracterising. Indeed, Jürgen Habermas,
To continue reading
Request your trial