Female bodies against Foucault's biopower: FEMEN case

Throughout the ages, female bodies have been judged, classified, tried to be dominated, regulated, and controlled by power which is mostly masculine. In this study it is investigated how women use their bodies and languages against biopolitics constructed by biopwer on female body and what things they are against according to Michel Foucault's theory of power. The subject of the research is FEMEN, which is considered a radical feminist group and organizes international distinctive protests. This study conducts a semiotic analysis of seven selected posts from FEMEN Turkey's Instagram account (@fementurkey), spanning from 2020 to 2023. It is tried to understand to what and how those women use their bodies against in the context of biopower. The way FEMEN oppose biopower is mostly contains their bodily expression of anger towards inequalities women faced and restrictions imposed on their bodies because of biopolitics on female body constructed by biopower. The way their use bodies and the language they use in the captions highlights that they are angry, rebellious, sometimes full of hatred, and decisive about conveying those feelings through not staying silent and, calling other women to provide solidarity to make the struggle stronger. Focusing on the language they use it can be said that they are producing hate speech because their words are full of anger. On the other hand, the words they write on their bodies can be counted as well. Keywords: Biopower, biopolitics, body, FEMEN, embodiment, opposing biopower