Date: February 4,2026 (Mon), 14:00–16:00 (JST)

Venue: The 1st Conference room (the 3rd floor), Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, the University of Tokyo

Language: English

Lecturer:
Charlotte Epstein ( Invited Professor, Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo;  Senior Researcher, Danish Institute for International Affairs (DIIS))

Abstract:
My aim in this talk is dig into the origins of the concept of security to understand how it has become a central notion of the world we live in. For example, it features as a fundamental right in the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man [sic] and of the Citizen; states regularly justify problematic, undemocratic measures in the name of (national) security. I propose a new angle for doing so, namely, the body — what I call a corporeal or bodily optic.  Under this optic I re-read the author who is (in many ways) the founding thinker of political modernity, Thomas Hobbes. It is, I argue, by casting his focus upon the body, that Hobbes establishes a fundamental right to security, and protecting that right as the raison d’être of the state. The bodily optic serves first, to reveal the corporeal ontology that still characterises the state to this day. Second, it affords a critical instrument for denaturalising security as a commanding imperative of the state. 

Organized by:
Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo
The Ushioda Initiative of Arts, East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts, The University of Tokyo（EAA）