ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the public, private and political in the work of Adriana Cavarero by drawing upon the situations of two women whose lives feature in her work: Elizabeth I and Penelope. It includes an analysis of the way in which Cavarero is rethinking Hannah Arendt’s view of “the political.” Cavarero’s exposition of the metaphor of the king’s two bodies in the common law is explored, along with her critique of hylomorphism. Finally, I extend her work in Stately Bodies by considering different images of the power of the body in later political discourses regarding the worker’s body and the effect of the advance of techno-science.
