The Naked Body as a Political Weapon. An Analysis from the Thought of Merleau-Ponty (and Michel Henry)

In recent years, the use of nudity in public spaces has frequently become used to promote or reject certain policies, in such a way that the movements that turn to what has been called «political porn» are now numerous. The central argument of the article uses Merleau-Ponty's phenomenology to show how the political exposition of the body cancels the possibility of being recognized for what one is and shifts the interlocutors (exhibitionist-spectator) towards a negative dialectic of mutual ignorance. Finally, it is shown why, in a democratic and plural society, the political display of the naked body itself tends, by its own reifying nature, to undermine the conditions of the rational exercise of public deliberation.