Habeas Corpus: How Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song exposes that corporal existence is dependent upon a hegemonic social construct

Abstract

Habeas Corpus directly translates to showing of a body and is commonly accepted as a right to a trial; this article explores the subjective nature of what recognises a body worthy of trial within a social construct and how hegemonic influence can present or hide a body at will. The article uses the philosophical lens of Deleuze and Guattari, as their binary metaphor of “root versus rhizome” helps to define corporal subjectivity. The article is based on Paul Lynch’s novel Prophet Song as a way of explaining the philosophy, as the dystopian novel provides examples of the shifting definitions of bodies at the will of the state. Furthermore, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities and Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence are compared on a cartesian grid to explain the way a body can shift between definition or ambiguity dependent on the way it is presented to the public. The conclusion is that corporeal definition is contingent on the hegemonic interpretation of what defines a body within a social construct.