Somatic practices and care

The course explores, through experiences and anthropological writings, broadened and decentralized approaches and understandings of the body and care. The somatic practices that make and unmake bodies, people and collectives will serve as a starting point for thinking about relational modes that challenge an extractivist and epistemologically murderous modernity. It will be about bodies constructed, deconstructed, abused, cared for, intoxicated, polluted, ingested, digested, rooted, decomposed, through practices that open and close, compose and decompose bodies and their borders. We will question the continuity of the "materials" which sometimes inhabit, sometimes cross, sometimes emerge from bodies, in particular through the notions of "living materials" and "organic practices", which are located in counterpoint to the usual biological sharing between "living" and "inert". Care will be considered as an ethical, feminist and decolonial horizon, where bodies and care emerge from practices.