With the arrival of the Europeans, the dressed body became a discursive forum upon which to negotiate the possession of land and the legitimate right to govern in Latin America. In conquest chronicles, the Aristotelian notion that mother nature marked the bodies of those she destined for slavedom came to be applied as a primary discursive tool to justify Spain’s claim to sovereignty. Amerindian forms of dress (or lack thereof) served as visual markers of mental and moral inferiority, lack of civic principles, and an inability of indigenous peoples to self-govern. This study examines the persistence of these impressions of inferiority in modern day body politics. It also questions the applicability of concepts imported from Europe that are involved in the configuration of sovereignty as its formulation changed from something imposed by the conquest to a political principle upon which Latin America’s political communities defined themselves. I analyze the representation of politically charged bodies in four 20th century narratives that dialogue with three crucial moments in the evolution of sovereignty in Latin America (the conquest, the independence movements, and modern-day popular revolutions). Drawing from recent political theory, which views sovereignty as a continually evolving multifaceted social practice involving a wide variety of cultural and legal practices, this dissertation examines the complex processes by which bodies, both physical and symbolic, become vested with political significance. In response to Moira Gatens’s work, which argues that just as theory has abandoned neutral and abstract conceptualizations of material bodies, bodies politic should similarly be examined as historically situated practices determined by specific power relations (gender, class, race, etc.); I propose that we, scholars of Latin American Studies, must find the equivalent of what Luce Irigaray, referring to women’s bodies, calls ‘our body’s language.’ This dissertation observes that the link between sovereignty and the dressed body in Latin America begs further examination, and that we must develop a set of terms and concepts that capture the specific cultural, political and ideological circumstances behind how the body performs at a material and symbolic level in Latin America’s quest toward sovereignty. / Romance Languages and Literatures

In this thesis, I explore the African, Caribbean, and Black communities— as it pertains directly to the Black racial classification— and their place within the Canadian blood donation system. The aim is to explore the ways in which the legacy of risk, the Black racial classification, pathology, and associations with disease may be manifested in donation policies and procedures (current and retired). Precisely, my interest lies in the subtle and diffuse ways in which Negrophobia (and its variant racism) survive in blood donation in spite of putative efforts to neutralize it. I undertook this study with the aim to fill a noticeable gap in the literature, by providing knowledge on the ways in which racial stereotypes can be disseminated discursively through institutionalized health policies. As data sources, I used explicitly publicly accessible national (and international) document materials on blood donation. With a critical discourse analysis methodology, the evidence presented demonstrate that under the guise of value-freedom, blood donation guidelines have the ability to reinforce dangerous assumptions providing a rationale for Negrophobic beliefs, behaviours and policies within the blood system. Studying blood donation in this manner offers evidence for the ways in which health institutions continue to treat Black populations based on racial stereotypes. This exceptional attention to the Black racial classification in blood donation provides important insights into the understanding of the lasting and plagued relationship that Black peoples have had with the scientific community, illustrating that institutionalized Negrophobia may remain imbedded despite decades of sociopolitical and medical progress.

O trabalho pretende demonstrar como Rousseau concebe a passagem do estado natural rumo à situação civil, tomando-se o corpo humano como uma perspectiva privilegiada para a descrição de tal processo. Nessa direção, serão assinaladas as consequências advindas ao homem nessa mudança, mostrando-se de que maneira, originariamente, ele é concebido, para ressaltar como o seu corpo, sua saúde e seu vigor são afetados. A partir dessa caracterização do homem no estado de natureza, tornar-se-á possível constatar a força ou a fraqueza do homem no estado civilizado, além do que foi acrescido ou subtraído em sua constituição original. Uma vez abandonada essa situação inicial, será ressaltada a importância do desenvolvimento de novas faculdades no homem, que lhe permitirão confeccionar ferramentas e facilitarão sobremaneira a sua subsistência, mas que trarão profundas consequências para o seu corpo e influirão decisivamente no surgimento de novas ideias. Igualmente novos sentimentos serão despertados e, com isso, o corpo será encarado de maneira diferente do seu semelhante daquele estado natural e esse quadro conduzirá ao aparecimento do estado civil. Finalmente inseridos nesse estado, importa expor como o pensador genebrino compreenderá o que seja um corpo político e a relação entre os homens e esse corpo maior do qual fazem parte. Assim, será estudado de que modo o comportamento dos indivíduos refletirá diretamente na própria manutenção do estado civil: serão analisadas as atividades propostas por Rousseau que, ao mesmo tempo em que conferem saúde e vigor aos corpos dos cidadãos, igualmente contribuirão de modo decisivo para a conservação (ou saúde) do próprio corpo político. / This work intends to demonstrate how Rousseau conceives the passage from the natural state to the civil situation, taking the human body as a privileged perspective to the description of such process. In this direction, the consequences of this change to man will be assigned, showing in which way he is originally conceived in order to point out how his body, his health and his strength are affected. By this characterization of the man in the state of nature, it will become possible to find the force or the weakness of the man in the civilized state and, besides, what was added to his original constitution or subtracted from it. Once abandoned this initial situation, it will be pointed out the importance of the development of new faculties in man, which will allow him to build tools and will much ease his subsistence, but will cause deep consequences to his body and will influence decisively in the arising of new ideas. New feelings will also arise and, with this, the body will be faced in a different way compared to his equal from that natural state and this situation will lead to the arising of the civil state. Finally inserted in this state, it is also important to expose how the genevian thinker will understand what a body politic is and the relationship between men and this bigger body where they are. Then, it will be studied in which way the behavior of individuals will directly reflect in the maintenance of the civil state itself: the activities proposed by Rousseau will be analyzed which, by the time they provide health and strength to the citizen\'s bodies, will also contribute in a decisive way to the conservation (or health) of the body politic itself.

Precipitated by important work in recent natural law political theory, this research revisits the relationship between political association and human flourishing. Does the political community itself realize some aspect of human sociability intrinsic to our full flourishing or is it simply an instrumental good? The inquiry begins with a thorough examination of the merits of John Finnis’s influential argument for an instrumental political common good, pointing to a significant lacuna in his inattention to the value of political activity, as opposed to the operation of government and law. In building an alternative positive account the argument relies upon both formal and substantive considerations, generally employing an Aristotelian methodology of understanding the whole via a consideration of its constitutive parts. First, drawing from Aquinas’s Aristotelian commentaries to unpack the basic structure of part/whole relationships within the “body politic,” I argue that political community is partially defined by the nature of its basic constitutive parts. The next chapter considers the substantive good of familial association, particularly in light of longstanding concerns with the family’s particularity and inequality. I argue that the intrinsically liberal and educative character of parental love rightly orients children to virtuous activity and invests familial association with an intrinsic rationality. The final two chapters bring direct focus onto the political common good: First, I argue that a normatively compelling account of the political common good must be both inclusivist, i.e., including within its purpose the irreducibly diverse goods of every individual and basic association within the community, and distinctive, i.e., including within the calculus of practical reason the good of the political association as such. Lastly, I argue that the political common good is intrinsically—though only partially—constitutive of the human social good. Aquinas makes a crucial shift away from Aristotle’s political primacy in his more pluralistic account of human sociability and emphasis on the extensiveness of the political good over the superiority of political activity per se. Nevertheless, there are essential human virtues—justice, love, generosity—that are uniquely, if not exclusively, fostered in political community and potentially realized in civic friendship. / text

O trabalho pretende demonstrar como Rousseau concebe a passagem do estado natural rumo à situação civil, tomando-se o corpo humano como uma perspectiva privilegiada para a descrição de tal processo. Nessa direção, serão assinaladas as consequências advindas ao homem nessa mudança, mostrando-se de que maneira, originariamente, ele é concebido, para ressaltar como o seu corpo, sua saúde e seu vigor são afetados. A partir dessa caracterização do homem no estado de natureza, tornar-se-á possível constatar a força ou a fraqueza do homem no estado civilizado, além do que foi acrescido ou subtraído em sua constituição original. Uma vez abandonada essa situação inicial, será ressaltada a importância do desenvolvimento de novas faculdades no homem, que lhe permitirão confeccionar ferramentas e facilitarão sobremaneira a sua subsistência, mas que trarão profundas consequências para o seu corpo e influirão decisivamente no surgimento de novas ideias. Igualmente novos sentimentos serão despertados e, com isso, o corpo será encarado de maneira diferente do seu semelhante daquele estado natural e esse quadro conduzirá ao aparecimento do estado civil. Finalmente inseridos nesse estado, importa expor como o pensador genebrino compreenderá o que seja um corpo político e a relação entre os homens e esse corpo maior do qual fazem parte. Assim, será estudado de que modo o comportamento dos indivíduos refletirá diretamente na própria manutenção do estado civil: serão analisadas as atividades propostas por Rousseau que, ao mesmo tempo em que conferem saúde e vigor aos corpos dos cidadãos, igualmente contribuirão de modo decisivo para a conservação (ou saúde) do próprio corpo político. / This work intends to demonstrate how Rousseau conceives the passage from the natural state to the civil situation, taking the human body as a privileged perspective to the description of such process. In this direction, the consequences of this change to man will be assigned, showing in which way he is originally conceived in order to point out how his body, his health and his strength are affected. By this characterization of the man in the state of nature, it will become possible to find the force or the weakness of the man in the civilized state and, besides, what was added to his original constitution or subtracted from it. Once abandoned this initial situation, it will be pointed out the importance of the development of new faculties in man, which will allow him to build tools and will much ease his subsistence, but will cause deep consequences to his body and will influence decisively in the arising of new ideas. New feelings will also arise and, with this, the body will be faced in a different way compared to his equal from that natural state and this situation will lead to the arising of the civil state. Finally inserted in this state, it is also important to expose how the genevian thinker will understand what a body politic is and the relationship between men and this bigger body where they are. Then, it will be studied in which way the behavior of individuals will directly reflect in the maintenance of the civil state itself: the activities proposed by Rousseau will be analyzed which, by the time they provide health and strength to the citizen\'s bodies, will also contribute in a decisive way to the conservation (or health) of the body politic itself.

Centuries of devastating, recurrent outbreaks made the plague the archetypical disease of late medieval and early modern societies. Yet explanations of where it came from changed significantly over time. This dissertation examines how portrayals of the plague’s origins and place in society evolved separately in England and France, from the fourteenth to the eighteenth centuries. It relies in particular on plague tracts, a long-lasting literary genre that offered standardized therapeutic and curative advice. Medical historians have studied these sources to trace the development of medical thinking and practice over time. This dissertation focuses instead on the tracts’ changing discourses about the nature of the plague that are unique to time and to place. The study elaborates a new analytical method to investigate the materiality and contents of these historical documents: it involves close reading and a codicological/bibliographical comparison of approximately 180 tracts in manuscript and printed form, set into their appropriate historical contexts. Tract producers influenced how the plague was understood locally. England’s centralised print industry fostered the idea that London was the de facto site and source of the disease; France’s diffused industry, by contrast, encouraged the discussion and tracking of outbreaks in multiple cities. Understanding of the plague’s origins also evolved: belief in malevolent celestial events gave way, in turn, to blaming unhealthy local landscapes, then the living conditions of the poor, and finally the Ottoman Empire. By the mid-seventeenth century, tract writers pointed to the Ottoman Empire as the historical and geographical source of the disease. Especially during the tumultuous sixteenth century, religious discord, dynastic factionalism, and incapable rulers also appeared in the tracts as causes and effects of the plague. Plague tracts are direct expressions and reflections of the short- and medium-term historical waves in which they appeared. It is possible to trace through them shifts in political, cultural, and intellectual worldviews. The spread of humanism in particular influenced how tract writers discussed the plague’s origins and influence in society. This study thus demonstrates that understanding disease is a cultural construct specific to time and place. Observing the unique aspects of plague tracts enhances our ability to understand the place of disease in past human societies.

La présente étude porte sur l’anthropologie et la politique de Spinoza. Il s’agit précisément de montrer en quoi, la réflexion spinoziste sur l’homme se donne particulièrement à lire à travers les concepts d’ « individu », de « corps » et d’« affects ». Au cours de notre analyse, nous montrons que ces concepts occupent une place de choix chez l’auteur de l’Éthique pour deux raisons : d’une part, c’est par eux, que le philosophe déploie son analyse des rapports psychophysiques de l’individu humain. En effet, selon lui, le corps humain étant une réalité « en acte », il est nécessairement affecté par d’autres corps. Or, en tant qu’il est aussi l’objet de l’idée (l’esprit), rien n’affecte ou ne modifie sa puissance, sans qu’il ne soit perçu par l’esprit humain. Et, l’« affect » n’est tout autre que cette modification de la puissance corporelle et sa perception par l’esprit. Autrement dit, l’affect peut se définir comme la conscience simultanée que l’individu humain a de son propre corps, par l’entremise de la perception des altérations de la puissance d’agir de ce dernier (les sciences contemporaines, telles que la neurobiologie, la psychologie, la médecine, et bien d’autres, corroborent les thèses de Spinoza à ce propos). C’est en insistant sur la simultanéité des rapports psychophysiques, donc sur l’absence d’interaction du corps et de l’esprit, que Spinoza se démarque de Descartes. D’autre part, à travers les mêmes concepts (de « corps » et d’« affects »), Spinoza permet aussi de penser la constitution d’un autre genre de corps ; un corps né de l’union des individus humains, à savoir : le corps politique. Les affects sont, non seulement au fondement de la constitution de ce corps, mais ils sont aussi ce qui permet de réguler les affaires humaines. C’est en ce sens que Spinoza nous amène à concevoir le corps politique, non pas comme une rupture - contrairement à ce que soutenait Hobbes - mais comme une continuité de l’état de nature. Le mérite de l’anthropologie spinoziste est de montrer qu’autant la nature humaine ne peut se concevoir sans affects, autant aucune réflexion politique ne peut avoir de valeur de vérité sans la prise en compte de ces mêmes affects. / The Dissertation is a study of Spinoza’s anthropology and politics. It shows how Spinoza’s reflection on man can be read with an emphasis on the concepts of “individual”, “body” and “affects”. These concepts have a prominent place for the author of Ethics for two reasons: 1) they are central to his analysis of the mind body relation. Because, according to him the human body, for being a reality “in action”, is necessarily affected by other bodies. 2) However, as it is also the object of an idea (mind), nothing affects or modifies its power, without it is being perceived by the human mind. And the affect is the very modification of physical power and its perception by the mind. In other words, the affect can be defined as simultaneous consciousness that the human individual has from its own body by means of perception of the changes of his power to act (the contemporary sciences, such as the neurobiology, the psychology, the medicine, and many others, may confirm the theses of Spinoza). Our study pays attention to the simultaneity of the affections of the body and the ideas of these affections in the mind, and to the lack of interaction of body and mind that characterizes Spinoza’s philosophy and makes the difference with Descartes’ conception. It is important to emphasize that Spinoza with the same concepts of “individual”, “body” and “affects”, also allows us to think of the constitution of another kind of body the political body. The affects are not only on the foundation of the constitution of this body, but they are also what allowed to regulate human affairs. It is in this sense that Spinoza leads us to conceive the body politics, not as a breakage - unlike Hobbes - but as a continuation of the state of nature. Spinoza’s anthropology is powerful, because it proves that human nature cannot be conceived without affects, as well as no political thinking can have a value without considering the affects.

The modern nation-state is the product of a gradual process in which the religiously concerned medieval political and ecclesiastical synthesis became more secular and centralized. Mirroring this external institutional development, the theoretical conception of the state changed from one of a natural organic unity of diverse corporate members to a consent-based compact among atomized individuals. This change can be traced in the Body Politic metaphor of four authors: John of Salisbury, Christine de Pizan, Johannes Althusius, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In this project, I argue that the Body Politic metaphor, particularly the inclusion or exclusion of a soul of the Body Politic, is uniquely appropriate for capturing the complexity of political life in general across differing levels of aggregation and for elucidating the political and religious commitments of the authors who employ it, as they critique their own contemporary political and religious institutions and describe their ideal societies. In the conclusion, I suggest that the loss of a strongly organic conception of the state has denied modern society and political theory a well established means for incorporating corporate entities and for explaining the existence of the modern nation-state in any kind of transcendental moral context, thus the lost soul of the Body Politic.

Nous narrons la toponymie de Beyrouth, considérée comme partie intégrante de l’idéologie du corps politique du Liban, installé à Beyrouth depuis 1920. Nous commençons par une réflexion sur les rapports entre centre politique, ses principes fondateurs, et toponymie: l’inscription toponymique est l’insertion ultime du politique dans l’aménagement. La toponymie beyrouthine inscrit le Grand-Liban (1920), et la Constitution libanaise (1926), sur les cartes. Elle inscrit le confessionnalisme politique résultant du Pacte national (1943) et ses symboles « sacrés », ainsi qu’une présence confirmée des « Orient » et « Occident » et un récit national libanais partiellement réinventé et présenté « en continuité ». Elle présente les signes d’une continuité urbaine visible. Nous mettons l’exemple beyrouthin en perspective avec ceux de Damas et de Dubaï : le premier est « réécrit » avec l’avènement du Baath en 1963 et présente une rupture toponymique avec le passé syrien pré-baathiste, ainsi qu’une présence triomphaliste du panarabisme; et le deuxième inventé afin de donner une profondeur historique à la carte de l’émirat et une dimension commerciale à ses noms des lieux. L’étude des inscriptions toponymiques, en parallèle avec les principes fondateurs du centre politique, permet d’approfondir la connaissance des systèmes politiques, leurs idéologies, et leurs politique d’urbanisme. / I narrate toponymy of Beirut, considered as a revelator and a marker of the Lebanese body politic, constructed in Beirut since 1920. This memoir begins by reflecting on the rapports between the centre politic (capital city or seat of government), its founding principles, and toponymy : the toponyme is the ultimate insertion of the political in everyday’s banality. Beiruti toponymy writes the Grand-Liban (1920), the Lebanese Constitution (1926), on the city’s maps. Also it inscribes political confessionalism, resulting of the Lebanese National Pact (1943) and its sacred symbols, thus a confirmed presence of « East » and « West » and a Lebanese national narrative partially re-invented and presented as a « continuum ». It also presents signs of a visible continuity of the local elite. We put the Beiruti example in perspective with those of Damascus and of Dubai : the Damascene one is « re-written » by the Baath rule since 1963 and presents a toponymic rupture with the Syrian pre-baathist past but a confirmed presence of pan-Arabism; the Dubaian one is invented in order to give a historical depth to the map of Dubai and a commercial dimension to its place names. Study of toponyms, in parallel with that of founding principles of the centre, can inform political systems, their ideological background, and their urban policy.