Body in dis(course): domination and resistance in the Handmaid Tale

Abstract

Interest in the body as an object of knowledge is as old as civilization. Its modes of representation have been transformed along with the discursive practices that defines. This contributed to present the body as an analytical element of social relations and as an object of representation for behaviors, attitudes, morality, aesthetics and ethics of a given socio-historical period. In this paper we undertake an analysis of interpretation gestures regarding woman subject body in the book The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985 [2017]) and the television adaptation created by Bruce Miller in 2017. As theoretical and methodological framework we follow the discursive studies of Pêcheux (2014, 2015, 2016), Orlandi (2016) and Ferreira (2013). We aim to understand in both literary and filmic versions the discursive modes of domination and resistance of/in the body. In this perspective, two discursive functions are characterized: the one of the dominated body and the one of the resistant body, the latter unfolding in two positions: subsistence body and erotic body.

Keywords

• corpo. discurso. dominação. resistência. o conto da aia.