Towards Embodied Resistance: Emerging Voices from Today's Social Justice Movements 

Emerging social justice scholars (e.g. Berila 2016, Johnson 2018, Finch 2022) and activists (e.g. Haines 2019, Page & Woodland 2023, Hemphill 2024) have recently stressed the importance of embodied and healing-centered approaches for political liberation. The novel frameworks of embodied social justice (Johnson 2018), and healing justice (Page & Woodland 2023) highlight the connections between individual and collective healing and social justice and emphasize the importance of embodied knowledge for unlearning internalized patterns of oppression and privilege, and working towards transformative change (Johnson 2018, 70-71, Berila 2016, 41-48, Finch 14-15). Treating the body as a site of knowledge and resistance aligns with feminist thought and feminist politicized models of radical self-care (e.g. Lorde 1988, hooks 2001, Anzaldúa 2002, Ahmed 2017) yet deepens it with a somatic and trauma-informed orientation. This paper builds on contemporary social movement scholarship activism, including 26 expert interviews with people working in the social justice field conducted for my ongoing doctoral research. Among the interviewees are, for example, scholar-activists, movement leaders, facilitators, and politicized therapists from North America, South America, and Europe. The common nominator among participants is their experience applying embodiment practices with social and political analysis in their work. The empirical material is approached as embodied counternarratives—stories based on lived experiences that provide information on the topic while challenging the dominant ideologies and creating a new kind of reality (Hydén 2013, Hyvärinen 2021). Using a critical feminist phenomenological lens, I ask what can be learnt from activists who work at the intersection of social/climate justice, trauma and embodiment. In particular, what can a more embodied approach bring to discussions on political resistance and movement resilience? Referring to José Medina's (2013) concept of epistemic resistance, consisting of social knowledge and self-knowledge, I argue that recognizing the body's role in reproducing and dismantling social power can support political resistance and build more sustainable and transformative social justice movements. By emphasizing the connections between individual and collective healing and social justice and the importance of embodied knowledge in dismantling oppression, the paper proposes an innovative approach to navigate the global times of crises and participates in and deepens the earlier feminist discussions on politicized models for healing and liberation, focusing on somatic, felt-sense knowledge of the body.