The Body in the Discourses of Colonial Savage and European Woman during the Enlightenment

Today, issues of race, ethnicity, and racism require a new kind of attention by feminist scholarship in German Studies. The discourse of the body is proposed as a feminist model integrating these concerns. This article first examines Sigrid Weigel's essay "Die nahe Fremde" and her hypothesis that a substitution process between the Enlightenment discourses of European woman and colonial savage took place. The discourse of the body is then used to challenge this hypothesis and to argue for the need and possibility of integrating both issues, race and sexuality, on a discursive as well as on a material level. (IL)