The Body Sliding Meanings: The Discursive (Inter)(En)lacement of the Political on the Frontiers with the Social

Abstract

This article aims to discuss the question of the signifying materiality of the body in the discursive interlacement of the political imbricated on the frontiers with the social, based on the works of Dan Halter. To this end, we propose a theoretical-analytical dialogue between the dialogical perspective developed by Russian Mikhail Bakhtin and the historical-materialism perspective, based on the theoretical assumptions of the French Discourse Analysis, in order to analyze the object of this study in its relation with body, memory, and discourse. In this sense, by working with the imbrication between verbal and non-verbal materiality, we intend to focus on two specific works by Zimbabwean artist Dan Halter, considering the meaning effects that slide metaphorically and metonymically to other senses of the body that unfold in different images of the subject, in view of the processes that structure the conflict and tensivity of the social from the spaces occupied by these bodies and crossed by the symbolic, by ideology, and history.