Performing Dignity: Bodily Autonomy, Care, and the Politics of Recognition

This paper examines dignity as a performed, relational, and contested concept — constituted through concrete practices of bodily care, political recognition, and aesthetic self-expression rather than inhering as a fixed metaphysical attribute. Drawing on Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach, Axel Honneth's recognition theory, Judith Butler's account of bodily vulnerability and precarity, F.A. Hayek's spontaneous order framework, and Hans-Georg Gadamer's play ontology, the paper develops a tripartite architecture of dignity comprising dignity as capability, dignity as recognition, and dignity as performance. Original analytical contributions include three interlocking formal models: the Dignity Production Function (DPF), the Recognition-Capability Matrix (RCM), and the Relational Dignity Index (RDI) — each operationalising a dimension of dignity measurement beyond conventional welfare proxies. The paper applies these models to ethnographic fieldwork at Manipal Hospice and Research Centre (MHRC), India, analysing the Speech-Swallow-Soul (Vāk) Triad, the Dual Pharmacopoeia, and a scored register of spontaneous care practices. The central argument is that bodily autonomy is not a pre-social possession but an achievable capability requiring institutional scaffolding, relational recognition, and spontaneous care orders to be realised. Submitted as part of MA European Studies coursework (HSS5104), Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts (MISHA), Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India. June 2026.