Rosie Price (KCL) - 2022-23 Students

The Body Is A Situation

The Body Is A Situation is an essayistic memoir on the radical power of embodiment practices.The book examines my own experience of post-traumatic dissociation, the violence that such disembodiment does to selves and communities, and the possibilities for healing through collective movement. Using my experience of and recovery from sexual violence as a starting point, I interrogate and celebrate acts of embodiment – from yoga and breath-work to eye-movement therapy, from combat sports to anti-fascist football. I examine the conflicts in popular feminist discourse between individual and collective healing. I ask if focussing on individual healing and ‘justice’ undermines the feminist project of systemic change. Drawing on de Beauvoir’s idea that ‘the body…is a situation…our grasp on the world’, I look to collective movement practices (such as yoga) and embodiment as alternative paths to post-traumatic recovery. With the body as my subject, I am seeking to transform our conversations around trauma and survival, loneliness and the internet, disability and community, the attention and wellness economies, and the way we connect to our own bodies and each other.

Primary supervisor: Professor Lara Feigel, KCL
Secondary supervisor: Dr Jon Day, KCL

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