Analyzing the relationship between body and politics in the feminist theory

The aim of this thesis is to present discussions involving the discourse and practices produced on the female body in the context of feminist theory. Each of the feminist theories has interpreted the concept of the body in different perspectives and has offered different analyzes of this concept. The concept of the body has been important in the context of understanding the material experience of being a woman. The shortcoming caused by the concept of the body not taking place in feminist practices before a conscious and systematic feminist theory emerged in the historical process. In particular, discussions on psychoanalysis and Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" has revealed the necessity of an epistemological and ontological analysis of the body in feminist theory. In the first part of this thesis, the emergence of feminist theory and what kind of conceptual debates it includes will be discussed. Without prejudice to the absence of discussions on the concept of body in the first part, In the second part of the thesis, the concept of body, which started to be discussed in feminist theory with the influence of Beauvoir first of all, the analysis of "The Second Sex" and the theoretical framework of radical feminism inspired by it on sexuality and various body politics are discussed. Then, in the context of ecofeminism, the analogy of the animal body and the female body in vegetarian feminist theory are discussed. In the last chapter, a brief introduction to queer theory is made and Judith Butler's problematization of the body in the context of Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray, and discussions on psychoanalysis, the corporeal feminism of Elizabeth Grosz and in the context of Rosi Bradiotti's nomadic feminist project, the concept of the body are discussed.