I Me Mine: A Feminist Tracing of the Concept of Self-Ownership

Abstract

The text proposes to review the conceptions of self-ownership, property in the person and ownership of the body, from contemporary feminist readings, especially those of Carole Pateman, Anne Phillips, Donna Dickenson and Rosalind Pollack Petchesky. It is argued that we are witnessing a radical change in the relations between property and the body and a transformation in the conceptions and experiences surrounding them. This transformation can be described as a “second enclosure”, that is, a growing commodification of bodies and a privatization of the commons over them. This produces a feminization of bodies, beyond sex-gender determinations, as the commodification and commoditization (which were typical of the treatment of feminized bodies, throughout history), extends to other bodies