Politicizing Embodied Violence: Emerging and Diverging Frames of Self-Defense
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Date
2021-09-13
Authors
Cupo, Dimitra
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
This study bridges the gap between self-defense classes whose founders, instructors, and students are predominantly white, advocating for an individualistic and embodied self-defense, compared to the self-defense practiced by women of color that took a different form, communal and armed. Given this disparity I ask, “What happens to women’s bodies as they “do” self-defense”? Do their bodies change given the tools acquired from a self-defense class? I found that racial differences significantly intervene in the self-defense classroom. I also asked, “How is a body implicated in a class dedicated to changing its capacities?” Two components proved to be crucial in turning a feminine body into a fighting body, fear and failure accompanied with laughter and expulsion of real harm. Taken together, this research asks, “What is the relationship of the self-defense body to communities that produced them?” Historically, quite different types of self-defense emerge, differing by the class and racial makeup of surrounding communities. How is this history embedded in the body? Overall, this project brings together historical as well as contemporary iterations of self-defense to ask, what does self-defense ask of the body, and what in turn does it do to it?
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Keywords
intersectionality, self defense, sexual violence, white privilege