Alan Hyde is Professor and Sidney Reitman Scholar at the Rutgers University School of Law (Newark).
Review
"Full of provocative insights. . . . "
--Booklist
Endorsement:
"Alan Hyde has produced a stunning critical anatomy of how the human body figures (and is figured) in American
legal discourse. Anyone who wants to understand the myriad mechanisms by which law constructs and regulates corporeality
would do well to start with this book. Bodies of Law will stand as a decisive intervention in the study of law
and contemporary 'body politics.'"
--Kendall Thomas, Columbia Law School
Princeton University Press Web Site, August, 2001
Summary
The most basic assertions about our bodies--that they are ours and distinguish us from each other, that they
are private and have boundaries, races, and genders--are all political theories, constructed in legal texts for
political purposes. So argues Alan Hyde in this first account of the body in legal thought. Hyde demonstrates that
none of the constructions of the body in legal texts are universal truths that rest solely on body experience.
Drawing on an array of fascinating case material, he shows that legal texts can construct all kinds of bodies,
including those that are not owned at all, that are just like other bodies, that are public, open, and accessible
to others. Further, the language, images, and metaphors of the body in legal texts can often convince us of positions
to which we would not assent as a matter of political theory.
Through analysis of legal texts, Hyde shows, for example, how law's words construct the vagina as the most searchable
body part; the penis as entirely under mental control; the bone marrow that need not be shared with a half-sibling
who will die without it; and urine that must be surrendered for drug testing in rituals of national purification.
This book will interest anyone concerned with cultural studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, and political theory,
or anyone who has heard the phrase "body constructed in discourse" and wants to see, step by step, exactly
how this is done.
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction
Ch. 1 The Body as Machine: Hawkins v. McGee
Ch. 2 The Fatigued Body: On the Progressive History of the Body as Machine
Ch. 3 The Body as Property
Ch. 4 Constructing the Autonomous Legal Body: Privacy, Property, Inviolability
Ch. 5 Reproductive Capacity: Unsalable, Commodified, Compensable
Ch. 6 Sandwich Man; or, The Economic and Political History of Bodily Display
Ch. 7 Suppressing Bodily Display: Legal Breasts, Sunbathing, Dance, Photographic Images
Ch. 8 The Body's Narratives
Ch. 9 The Legal Vagina
Ch. 10 The Legal Penis
Ch. 11 Tranquilizing the Prisoner
Ch. 12 Body Wastes
Ch. 13 The Racial Body
Ch. 14 Diseased Bodies: Antibodies and Anti-Bodies
Ch. 15 Offensive Bodies
