THE FEMALE BODY AS A SITE OF PATRIARCHAL CONTROL

Abstract

The text analyzes the female body as a privileged locus of patriarchal control, situated at the intersection of practices of government, biopolitical techniques, and neoliberal rationality. Drawing on the dystopian narrative of The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, it examines how dispositifs of power transform female bodies into objects functional to reproduction and the management of life, revealing contemporary dynamics of discipline, vulnerability, and violability. Contributions from feminist theory, biopolitics, and critical legal studies are brought together to demonstrate how classical dichotomies-public and private, production and reproduction, nature and artificiality-are reconfigured under neoliberalism, converting the female body into a space of economic, legal, and symbolic dispute. The analysis extends to global care chains, reproductive outsourcing, and transnational inequalities that disproportionately affect racialized and migrant women, exposing the persistence of subtle and diffuse forms of domination. On the legal plane, the text problematizes the historical contingency of fundamental rights, with particular attention to reproductive rights, discussing recent setbacks such as the Dobbs v. Jackson decision in the United States and contrasting them with emancipatory processes underway in Latin America. It concludes by arguing for the need for a dynamic and performative culture of rights, capable of unveiling the symbolic violence that naturalizes the objectification of female bodies and of reaffirming the political character of the personal.