The Body Talks Back: An Embodied Expansion of Critical Consciousness

Abstract

In this post-intentional phenomenological study, I investigated the phenomenon of critical consciousness taking shape for young people and adults engaged in a youth participatory action research project. Sixteen participants, including the author, collaborated to examine health, well-being, and barriers to health and well-being over the course of a six-week summer research project. I analyzed sources of post-intentional material including transcripts of work sessions, discussions, focus-group interviews, and my post-reflexion journal entries. Drawing on a neuroscience perspective (van der Kolk, 2014) and more recent considerations of Ladson-Billings’ (1995, 2006, 2014) culturally-relevant pedagogy (CRP)—especially her concern over the unequal attention paid to the development of sociopolitical consciousness (when compared to the attention paid to student achievement and affirmation of student’s cultural identities) in enactments of CRP. My research explores the brain-body connection and suggests that historical trauma (Menakem, 2017) lives in our racialized bodies and our social justice commitments and work cannot be addressed through our rational, thinking brains alone. This work suggests that an important part of fostering our own and one another’s critical consciousness involves recognizing, listening to, and learning from the information our bodies communicate. When we are able to notice the physical sensations we experience, process the emotions that we feel, and begin to notice when our bodies are and are not settled, we have initiated the necessary body work that must take place. This bodily-knowledge can be leveraged when coupled with our cognitive knowledge and skills to better understand ourselves and the world around us, while also better informing our decision-making and action-taking. This study has the possibility to attract the attention of adults who care for young people, youth-workers, and educators that may imagine another way they can be with, care for, and work alongside young people. It offers important insights for understanding how critical consciousness takes shape for both young people and adults; and it explores the ways historical trauma is stored within our racialized bodies and how we might metabolize pain to find ways to heal ourselves and be in new ways with one another in educational contexts.