David Granger

Funny Vibe: Towards a Somaesthetic Approach to Anti-racist Education

This chapter begins by examining in a rigorous yet accessible way the architectonics of the human body and the intimate mind-body relationship as discussed in the varied but complimentary work of John Dewey, Michel Foucault, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. In looking at this relationship, it utilizes philosopher Richard Shusterman’s analytic somaesthetics (or aesthetics of the lived body, or “soma”) to expose the way racist ideology is covertly materialized and preserved through encoding in somatic norms or habits that typically elude critical consciousness and reflection. As bodily habits, these somatic norms can trigger, reinforce, and even heighten oppressive and discriminatory ways of thinking, feeling, and acting in firsthand encounters with racial “others.” After establishing the problem of the visceral grip of racism in this manner, the chapter turns to Shusterman’s pragmatic somaesthetics for possible means of revealing and reconstructing these bodily habits, highlighting their “felt” aesthetic dimensions in nondiscursive experience. The chapter closes by arguing for the necessity of building a somaesthetic component into antiracist pedagogy and offers some initial suggestions for doing so.