ABSTRACT
In (neo)liberal political discourses, the ideal subject is an independent Homo oeconomicus: a masculine, disembodied being, who is self-sufficient and self-caring, while knowingly making rational, utilitarian, and abstracted ethical choices for the common good of all. The liberal subject is an invulnerable individual, or at least well secured against any risks in life. He is never ill; he does not leak bodily fluids (because he seems not to have a body); and he never ages. Or, in case he does age, he does so actively and ‘successfully’, in ways that his body’s care needs would never gain control of his life: the life of a subjective, rational Self. Feminist social and political theory argues that these conceptions of political subjectivity are non-realistic: such disembodied subjects simply do not exist (see Bacchi and Beasley 2002; Beattie and Schick 2013; Cohn 2014; Fineman 2008; Grosz 1994; Hoppania and Vaittinen 2015; Robinson 1999, 2011; Ruddick 1990; Shildrick 2002, 2012; Tronto 1993; Vaittinen 2015, 2017).
