Resisting Bodies
Between the Politics of Vulnerability and “We-Can”
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8410764 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marieke Borren (0009-0003-0681-6385, Open University of the Netherlands, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 111-128 |
| Publication date | 2024-01-02 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-1773 • E-ISSN: 2332-0486 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00071773.2023.2296396 |
| OpenAlex | W4390751985 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 25 |
This article presents a critical phenomenology of embodiment in radical democratic struggles, focusing on racialized citizens inhabiting and navigating public spaces and on anti-racist protests. It contrasts the notion of the precarious body, central to critical theorists like Judith Butler, with an alternative phenomenological understanding, locating the political significance of the body in spontaneous movement (Arendt) and competence (Merleau-Ponty). Attending to either precariousness or mobile-capable bodies reveals distinct dimensions of radical democratic struggles. While precariousness addresses the unequal distribution of social-material conditions, it tends to overshadow the shared lived experience of freedom among citizens countering inhibitions of free movement, often motivated by their disproportionate exposure to precarious conditions in the first place. From a phenomenological perspective, public action is permitted by capable and mobile bodies. It is argued that public space opens the power of “we-can” bodies by soliciting citizens' movement among others and their engagement in shared projects, according to their bodily capacities. Pluralistic interaction, aiming to maintain or create free spaces of movement, is presented as the political practice of freedom par excellence, exemplified by radical democratic walking practices in the Black civil rights movement
Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Excellence · Phenomenology (philosophy) · Political science · Politics · Public space · Sociology · Critical Theory and Political Philosophy · Gender Studies · Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy · Law · Philosophy · Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, and Politics
FeminisT Phenomenology
Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy
The Fate of Place
Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly
Rethinking Vulnerability and Resistance
Parting Ways
Civil Rights And The Idea Of Freedom
What World Is This
On Female Body Experience
The Human Condition
Multiple Moving Perceptions of the Real
Elevators, social spaces and racism
Racist habits
The origins of totalitarianism
Frames of war
The White Mob, (In) Equality Before the Law, and Racial Common Sense
Refounding Denied
The normal, the natural, and the normative
A phenomenology of whiteness
Antigone's Two Laws
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |