{"id":2913,"date":"2018-01-30T20:15:55","date_gmt":"2018-01-31T01:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/?p=2913"},"modified":"2018-01-30T20:15:55","modified_gmt":"2018-01-31T01:15:55","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-resisting-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-resisting-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Resisting Bodies"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

January 30, 2018. 5:25pm CST. I am sitting on a plane headed to Birmingham, Alabama, for a hearing tomorrow in federal court\u2014in the Hugo L. Black Federal Courthouse in historic downtown Birmingham\u2014on Doyle Hamm\u2019s execution, scheduled for February 22, 2018. I had tried to write the introductory blog for our seminar on \u201cThe Body and Trouble,\u201d but kept needing to prepare one last pleading, one last exhibit, one last witness, one last consult. I should now be reading the Attorney General\u2019s most recent pleading, just filed before I left for the airport, their objections to the exhibits I will introduce tomorrow at the hearing on their motion for summary judgment, but all of a sudden the readings from Jack Halberstam<\/a>, Katherine Franke<\/a>, and Zethu Matebeni<\/a>, from Paul Preciado to Zeina Jallad<\/a>, came crushing down on me like thunder. How could I not have realized sooner the deep and sweeping interconnections between these remarkable theoretical interventions and the raw physicality and resistance taking place in Doyle Hamm\u2019s body.<\/p>\n

Paul Preciado\u2019s lived experienced of testosterone addiction and bodily transformations, Jack Halberstam\u2019s utterly compelling analysis of the transformations of the self, Katherine Franke\u2019s theorization of state power\u2014from miscegenation to same-sex marriage\u2014laced, as she demonstrates with the power of white supremacy, Zethu Matebeni\u2019s harrowing account of the wave of murders of black lesbian, gay, and trans* people in South Africa, they all highlight the centrality of these bodies, and the troubling of bodies, to social change, to resistance, to uprising. How the state shapes these bodies, alongside the many other corporate, social media, and economic actors, the pharmaceutical industry, among others, and how these bodies resist and trouble the attempted governance, these are central questions for our exploration of modalities of resistance.<\/p>\n

Of all our sessions of Uprising 13\/13, in fact, it is these forms of bodily resistance that seem to undergird the others\u2014and we had seen this, for instance, in the seminar on Satyagraha<\/em> and on civil disobedience. But here, the bodies rise to the fore as somehow transcending the collectivity. Sure, they can be collective as well, perhaps need to be, but the personal experiences of transformation are what seizes our political imagination: The transformations of the body as a political mode of revolt. Intended at time, unalterable or beyond our control at others.<\/p>\n

And that is where Doyle Hamm\u2019s body enters\u2014a sick, cancerous body, we have practically no idea what\u2019s going on inside because there\u2019s never even been a PET scan. No sonogram to know the conditions of his veins. Bumps and knots appear under his skin. A huge cancerous mass in his cranium popping his left eye out, irradiated. Something about the spinal fluid possibly affected, but no spinal tap. Lymphoma coursing through his lymph nodes, we can only assume. A cancerous lesion on his left cheek, biopsied three times, determined to be cancerous three times over the past four years\u2014there, for all to look at.<\/p>\n

\u201cBring us the body\u201d\u2014that is, habeas corpus<\/em>. Yesterday, the federal judge in Birmingham, who seems very conscientious, entered an order habeas corpus ad testificatum <\/em>to bring the body to court. This body that is getting sicker. This body that is not complying. This body that is, itself, alone apparently resisting the state, as it decays and grows old and dies.<\/p>\n

Like thunder, it all hit me. Body and trouble. I so look forward to our rich discussion on Thursday, February 1, 2018. But in the meantime, let me return to those objections. I will need to respond in less than fourteen hours from now, in Courtroom 8.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0 January 30, 2018. 5:25pm CST. I am sitting on a plane headed to Birmingham, Alabama, for a hearing tomorrow in federal court\u2014in the Hugo L. Black Federal Courthouse in historic downtown Birmingham\u2014on Doyle Hamm\u2019s execution, scheduled… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38974],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-9-13"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2913\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/uprising1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}