A Study Of The Body Politics Criticism In The Horizon Of Postmodernism

Body politics refers to the two-way struggle between the power and the body of controlling and anti-controlling, which includes both aspects of the power's discipline to the body and the body's resistance against the power. The struggles between the power and the body in the philosophy history can be traced back to Plato, and strictly speaking, body politics criticism is originated in Nietzsche --- the possibility of body politics criticism depends on the body's consciousness in philosophy; in our point of view, it is Nietzsche's philosophy that established the ontological legitimacy of the body to resist the power, in order to laid the foundation to construct a new discourse for body politics criticism. At the background of modernity, the problem of the body is becoming more and more evident, and body politics has infiltrated the various fields of the social and cultural life in pace with consumerism, to an unprecedented degree of detail and intension, becoming an important post-modern cultural and political phenomenon. In the field of literary and artistic, the body which has been living in the center of narration and show, becomes more active and visible with the generalization and intensification of body politics, and even the noisy "Body Writing" has emerged. However, behind the thriving body landscape of literary and artistic, there is a very serious problem --- the crisis of nihilism. Under such circumstances, to build an effective discourse of body politics criticism in literary theory to overcome the crisis of nihilism has become an extremely urgent task.In this paper, at the background of the antagonism between the power and the body, post-modernity and modernity, Nietzsche and Platonism, we discuss the development and evolution of body politics criticism and its efforts to overcome nihilism from three aspects including the art ontology, literary criticism and practical theory of body politics. In the art ontology, Nietzsche's art metaphysics of "body - will to power - spirit of Dionysus" conferred legitimacy and legality in philosophy to the body; his five propositions about the art are effective to overcome the nihilism, laying the ontology foundation to the body politics criticism theory. In literary criticism, Deleuze's "generation - body - event" theory developed Nietzsche's art metaphysics of "body - will to power - spirit of Dionysus" from two dimensions of philosophy and art, providing a theoretical weapon of generate theory for us to judge literary works (especially contemporary art) whether are "events" or "pseudo-events", whether are to activate the body or to consume it; Foucault and Bakhtin criticize humanism for belittling the body separately from two dimensions of the "universe tragic consciousness of madness" and the "carnival-type feel of the world", and fully demonstrated the legitimacy of the non-rational body, establishing the highest standard on the"Body Writing"at the significance of going beyond the humanism; Merleau-Ponty's study of the body phenomenology made a philosophical conclusion of impressionism and post-impressionism painting, demonstrating the legitimacy of the spiritual body of art creation. In practical theory of body politics, Deleuze and Guattari's analysis of schizophrenia to body - desire machine as the core really get rid of the subjective metaphysics since Descartes, restoring the reputation of schizophrenia in the capital society, calling postmodern nomadic subject to enter the stage of history, and putting the body politics criticism extend to the field of social life; The seven principles of the body's resistance to the power which Foucault summed up from the "Anti-Oedipus" become a theoretical guide of body politics criticism in the field of cultural studies. Roland Barthes's body-politics-game theory of"the pleasure of text"turns into the internal part of the text instead of intervening in the exterior society, and it is a body politics practice much closer to the text. From Nietzsche to Deleuze, the body politics criticism formed a perfect discourse system, which fully demonstrates the significance of post-modernism discourse-revolution of the body's resistance to the power.