Moving Medicine: Theorizing Embodiment for a More Empowered and Connected Social Body
This thesis investigates theories of embodiment through several embodied expressive experiences, including three movement-based therapies and two community-based embodied projects. Drawing on feminist epistemologies and standpoint theory, I explore the ambivalent location of these practices in relation to biomedicine. Through feminist phenomenology and materialisms, I analyze the material-semiotic constructions of embodiment reflected in these practices. In the contexts of biomedicalization and a neoliberal regime of health, I suggest that embodied expressive experiences like the cases considered here offer a more empowering approach to health and healing. Finally, I suggest that theories of embodiment shape understandings of health in critical ways, concluding from my final case studies that community-centered relational work can be the catalyst for rethinking the neoliberal regime of health.
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