My body my weapon”: the female body as a discursive materiality in FEMEN’s protests

This paper intends to demonstrate how the naked body can be understood as a discursive materiality (discursive body), insofar as it destabilizes meanings historically produced about women, their bodies and sexuality. We will use the theoretical perspective of the French Discourse Analysis of Michel Pêcheux, in order to analyze a protest,performed by the feminist group FEMEN, against the implantation of Sharia in Egypt after the events of the Arab Spring in 2012. With this reflection, we aim to show that the naked body, when covered with statements that question the control of the female bodies, produces different meanings, as it displaces the bodies of the protesters from pre-determined positions constructed by the religious discourse