Abstract

In this dissertation, I read Thomas Hobbes's political theory through his materialist metaphysics in order to challenge the political implications of the broadly held assumption that he conceives of political subjects as rational actors. I also contest feminist interpretations of Hobbes that construe sex/gender difference as a determinant category in his political theory. A central theoretical category in my analysis is Hobbes's conceptualization of the subject as a "thinking- body," which is a subject defined as "a body who has the capacity to think" rather than as an individual who is differentiated into two ontologically distinct entities of "mind" and "body." Hobbes scholars often miss the fact that he imagines the subject in this way because they systematically read Cartesian dualism back into his political theory. Implicit in such interpretations is the conviction that political subjects are definitively rational. Eschewing such assumptions, I elaborate the epistemological, psychological, and intersubjective implications of Hobbes's account of the subject as a "thinking-body," and explain how these shape his analysis of the production of power and the constitution of social and political order. ;To conceive of Hobbes's subject as a thinking-body is to transform his account of the social contract. In his recounting, individuals function as signs that constitute the political environment; their passions and dispositions are legible in their bodily gestures, actions, and demeanor. Hobbes's ethics forms the basis for this legibility, and this legibility makes possible meaningful political interaction. Accordingly, the contract that founds political society is not a rational act or singular and temporally finite event. Rather, I argue that the civil covenant is a process, an on-going series of signifying practices and activities that effect order and constitute the singular supremacy of the sovereign. Further, countering claims that sex/gender difference is the ground for political relations of inequality, I contend that in Hobbes's political theory, differences are enacted and elaborated through the public and daily practices constitutive of political order