Bodily undoing: Somatics as practices of critique

Abstract

This co-authored volume of The Journal for Dance and Somatic Practices (JDSP) focuses on construction and articulating the field of Somatics as critical practices. Glenna Batson (2017) argues towards the need for a new critique to fully address Somatics in the face of neoliberal globalization and an increasing planetary poly-crisis. How do we locate our embodied practices beyond commodification as critical and empowering practices? How do we question relevance, access, inclusion, and modes of knowledge production within our work? How do we articulate a critical stance toward elitism, Euro-centrism and under-theorisation historically associated with the field? Somatic practices can be understood as reflective processes of undoing existing patterns so that new ones can emerge. How can this transformative undoing be extended beyond the body of the individual to the body politic or the social body? How might we construct Somatics and affiliated transdisciplinary arts practices as practices of critique that might contribute to an alternative social imaginary or way of world-making? Can somatic processes and performance practices foster a capacity for self-reflection and criticality as feature of the ‘democratic citizen’ as ‘a member of the body politic’ (Morin 1999) within growing totalitarian socio-cultural contexts?