Another Politics is Embodied: Transformative Change-Making and Politicized Healing in the Contemporary US

Keywords: politicized healing, social justice, embodiment, somatics, feminist geopolitics, scale, ontologies of the body,
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

Contemporary accounts by political organizers and social change-makers acknowledge that burn-out and interpersonal conflict within change movements take a toll on what political futures are possible (Kindred Collective, 2022). As a response to these challenges, more groups in the US from Black Lives Matter to the National Domestic Workers Alliance are incorporating technologies that address interpersonal healing and offer support in navigating the traumatic impacts of marginalization and the ongoing stressors of organizing work. These technologies include transformative practices which understand the psychic and emotional interiorities of change makers as part of their embodied nervous system, which is always already shaped through and in social and relational fields. This understanding of scale bridges the psychic, material and social, and creates openings for political action that include healing past wounds and collective traumas, working through relational processes of rupture and repair, as well as building collective power towards desired futures. This presentation draws on interviews with thought leaders who are working at the intersections of collective healing and new political imaginaries to demonstrate the scalar logics of their politics. It will highlight how their visioning draws on a plurality of knowledges from decolonial praxis, queer relational ontologies, abolition and neuroscience to articulate a vision of social change and political world-building that concerns and emerges through every-day, relational experience.

Kindred Collective. “What Is Healing Justice?” Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective, https://kindredsouthernhjcollective.org/what-is-healing-justice/.