Koenigsberg Foucault

Foucault's has done his job: discourse shapes the body. Now we explore the fact that discourse originates in the body: is shaped by bodily experience and fantasies about one's own body (in relationship to the bodies of others).

• The term “body politic” is not simply a metaphor. The term expresses the fact that nations are experienced by human beings as if bodies. 
• The idea of the body politic is a projection of one's own body. Those who write or speak about the body politic are writing or speaking about their own bodies. The tie cannot be severed.
• Because nations are experienced in corporeal terms, they seek to secure their borders and orifices and entry points from infiltration, invasion and penetration. The outsider or alien is experienced as if streaming into one's own body.
• The experience of one’s nation with insecure or porous boundaries is equivalent to  fear that one’s actual body will be penetrated. The body must be firmed up: a wall built to prevent one's body from being invaded by alien forces. Building walls defends against fears of penetration.

Hysteria and paranoia are equivalent. Hysteria means that the alien object is experience as already within one's body (generating the desire to "eject" this object from within the boundaries of the self).

Paranoia means that the object is experienced as very close to the self, but still outside the body. The alien other must be fought--prevented from penetrated into the interior.