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Locke's Consuming Individual: A Theory of the Mixing Body

Kotef, Hagar

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Abstract

This article proposes that Locke’s basic property-making unit, and thus also contracting unit, is the household rather than the individual. Progressing through two parallel arguments concerning Locke’s theory of property—one focuses on the theory of mixing in Roman law and the other on more traditional understanding of labor—it shows how a plurality of people and animals is united under the rule of a single person, allowing the formal category of the individual to expand beyond its corporal limits, into the domestic domain. In some sense, this is an extended version of Pateman’s argument concerning the sexual contract, placing the latter within an intersectional framework that moves beyond the question of kinship and the family to the economic questions of class and production, as well as colonial questions of expansion and racial hierarchization.

Citation

Kotef, H. (2022). Locke's Consuming Individual: A Theory of the Mixing Body. Theory and Event, 25(2), 419-443. https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2022.0018

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Dec 15, 2022
Publication Date Apr 1, 2022
Deposit Date Jun 23, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jun 23, 2022
Journal Theory and Event
Electronic ISSN 1092-311X
Publisher Johns Hopkins University Press
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 25
Issue 2
Pages 419-443
DOI https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.2022.0018
Publisher URL https://muse.jhu.edu/article/852391

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Copyright Statement
This is the version of the article/chapter accepted for publication in Theory and Event, 25 (2). pp. 419-443 (2022), published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Re-use is subject to the publisher’s terms and conditions





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