The rise of modernism was accompanied by changes in socially sanctioned uses and meanings of the human body. This paper examines the political status of the body in modernity and attempts to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the role of the modern state in the constitution of modernist bodily politics. The paper has four sections. The first two provide an overview of the work of two well-known theorists of the body, Foucault and Bourdieu. The third section briefly discusses 19th-century gymnastics in France to help illustrate the political uses of the body by the modem state. In the last section, some general conclusions are drawn in order to sketch out a framework for studying the politics of the body in the context of modernity.