Fit for purpose? Richmond Professor explores PM Boris Johnson and the ‘body politic’

A highly topical article has just been published on Boris Johnson’s COVID-19 experience written by Dr Kandida Purnell, Assistant Professor of International Relations at Richmond.

Entitled ‘Fit for Purpose? Prime Minister Johnson’s Two Bodies and the UK Better Health Strategy’, the article on Somatosphere blog explores the UK’s launch of the ‘Better Health’ strategy, and the use of the metaphorical ‘body politic’. Somatosphere is a collaborative website covering the intersections of medical anthropology, science and technology studies, cultural psychiatry, psychology and bioethics.

Dr Purnell comments:

“In this blog post I demonstrate how particular, exaggeratedly masculinised, and outdated, enlightenment era and dualistic knowledge about bodies – internalised by British elites and PM Johnson – has reverberated around the body politic…”

Kandida Purnell is Assistant Professor of International Relations at Richmond, the American International University in London. Having previously published on the body politics of COVID-19, the Global War on Terror, war commemoration, and army/artist collaboration, Kandida’s monograph, Rethinking the Body in Global Politics is due for publication 1st April 2021 (Routledge Interventions) while research into Bringing Bodies Back: Repatriation and War Performance within Forever War and Feeling COVID-19 is ongoing.