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Encyclopedia entry: body politic
- Article from:
- The Oxford Companion to the Body
- Author:
Copyright© The Oxford Companion to the Body 2001, originally published by Oxford University Press 2001. (Hide copyright information)
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body politic
The image of the human body and its pervasiveness in both thought and literature attest to Alexander Pope's declaration that the only true study of mankind is man himself. Nowhere is this sentiment more resolutely expressed than in the idea of the body politic. Ostensibly an organicist term for civil society, which enjoyed much currency during the seventeenth century, it nevertheless has a long and interesting genesis. Essentially concerned with organic metaphors for the social order of society, the term has endured into the parlance of the present day, enjoying something of a renaissance, due to the body becoming an object of fashion, and made visible thanks largely to the ...