an analysis of "The Body is Not an Apology" by Da'Shaun L. Harrisson in "Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness"
...Sonya Renee Taylor asks the reader, essentially, to back to their beginning. Being we call humans were not born with hatred for their body or other people's bodies, and as such, she argues that this is integral for one to be able to embody or truly arrive at "radical self-love".
In sociological terms, what she is naming is that, thorough various social institutions, human beings are socialized - or taught - to hate their bodies and that there is a moment in our own lifetime where we did not look at ourselves through a lens of hate and disgust. These points are brilliant and fundamentally true. Where Taylor and I depart, however is here: irrespective of how much internal work one does for themselves, the systems under which they live that actively lay claim to their bodies are not and cannot be reversed through any introspection or outward radical self-love.
These socioeconomic political structures do not need the type of reform that a radical self-love would suggest, but rather they need total destruction.
If we go back to the beginning, if we pull up the roots, unless the social institutions through which we were initially socialized are destroyed, we can only ever return back to the place we left. There is a particular connection between destruction and love. In this case, if we love ourselves and the people around us, we must also be committed to destroying the World in which we and they are actively harmed.
This means that if love, of self or of others, is to play a role at all in any liberatory efforts, it must be a starting points and not an end.
If self-love is where we start, it must be the driving force behind our continued struggle; otherwise, we become stagnant and immovable, fixated on always challenging how we see our bodies and never getting to the place where we no longer have to interrogate our bodies at all.
Right now, we live in a world of systems, all of which affect the body, some that are familiar in name, and some that are less so - systems of Desire/ability, health, the overall diet and medical industrial complexes, policing, prisons, and gender. There is tangible work one must do to destroy the ontological violence which engenders, or forges the path for, what is known as structural violence. Unless and until there is a reckoning with the conceptual, an evaluation of just how un/impractical this violence is, love of self will never be the answer to oppression nor will it ever be guaranteed.
Because, while it is true that the violence of this World are happening to the body, the violence is not created by the Body.
Decolonizing conflict resolution: Addressing the ontological violence of westernization
PO Walker - American Indian Quarterly, 2004 - JSTOR https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Polly-Walker/publication/43450971_Decolonizing_Conflict_Resolution_Addressing_the_Ontological_Violence_of_Westernization/links/5cf54264299bf1fb1854a7c0/Decolonizing-Conflict-Resolution-Addressing-the-Ontological-Violence-of-Westernization.pdf?_sg%5B0%5D=started_experiment_milestone&origin=journalDetail
All human endeavors are shaped by the culture within which they are enacted. Deep culture or worldview shapes people’s ways of dealing with conflict (Avruch and Black 1990, 1991; Galtung 1990, 1996). However, the dominant Western models of conflict resolution neither acknowledge nor accommodate differences in culture, claiming that their techniques “cut across culture” (Avruch and Black 1990, 1991). This hegemony of Western conflict resolution limits Indigenous peoples’ opportunities to function within their own worldviews and to implement their own methods of processing conflict.
Worldview represents the deeper levels of culture, the beliefs and values that shape all behavior. Edward T. Hall defines worldview as “the underlying, hidden level of culture . . . a set of unspoken, implicit rules of behavior and thought that controls everything we do” (1983, 7). Hall clearly articulates the ontological violence that results when societies ignore differences in worldviews: “as long as human beings and the societies they form continue to recognize only surface culture and avoid the underlying primary culture, nothing but unpredictable explosions and violence can result”.
The following comparison of Western and Indigenous worldviews highlights differences that impact upon conflict transformation. Central characteristics of the dominant Western worldview include:
- a unilinear, present-centered conception of time
- an analytic rather than holistic conception of epistemology
- a human-over-human conception of human relations
- a human-over-nature conception of relations to nature (Galtung 1990, 313)
Central characteristics of many American Indian and Native Hawaiian worldviews include:
- circular (or spiral) conception of time (Bopp et al. 1989; Meyer 1998)
- a holistic conception of epistemology (Bopp et al. 1989; Cajete 2000, 2; Meyer 1998)
- nonhierarchical, shared-power conception of human relations (Bopp et al. 1989; Meyer 1998)
- humans in relationship of care and responsibility with nature (Bopp et al. 1989; Cajete 2000, 3; Meyer 1998)
The Navajo Justice and Harmony Ceremony emphasizes cocreative processes as evidenced by the language used within the ceremony. Specific words within the peacemaking ceremony denote process as movement toward a state of balance. For example, the leader of the ceremony asks if the process is moving toward harmony (hozhooji) or toward disharmony (hashkeeji) (Bluehouse and Zion 1993, 330). These expressions illuminate a worldview founded on processes of movement and flux rather than linear cause and effect.
The Indigenous conflict transformation approaches discussed in this article emphasize relationships by involving many family and community members, including extended family members, friends, and ancestors who are no longer present in bodily form. American Indian peacemaking “includes the widest circle of people concerned, each having a voice if they wish, not just the immediate ‘parties’ and their representatives” (LeResche 1993, 321). Furthermore, relationships with processes and beings of the natural world are also integrated within indigenous conflict transformation (Huber 1993; Shook and Kwan 1987).
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The Indigenous approaches to conflict transformation that are analyzed in this article reflect holistic conceptualizations of human experience in that they integrate intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experience. In writing of Indigenous approaches to conflict resolution, Diane LeResche explains the holistic approach of American Indians: Sacred justice is going beyond the techniques for handling conflicts;
> it involves going to the heart. It includes speaking from the heart, from one’s feelings. It is giving advice, reminding people of their responsibilities to one another. It is helping them reconnect with the higher spirits, or seeing the conflict in relation to the higher purposes. It is helping people ease, move beyond, transform the intense hurtful emotions like anger into reorienting and reuniting with that which is more important than the issues of the conflict. Sacred justice is found when the importance of restoring understanding and balance to relationships has been acknowledged. It almost always includes apologies and forgiveness. It is people working together, looking for mutual benefits for all in their widest circle. (LeResche 1993, 322)
Within the Indigenous conflict transformations analyzed in this article, emotional expression is encouraged as an integral part of the process. For example, in the Navajo Justice and Harmony Ceremony emotional expression is a central characteristic. The ceremony emphasizes the central role of emotion in bringing balance to the process (Yazzie 1995). Appropriate responses during Ho’oponopono are also holistic, stressing both emotion and intellect. The processes of Ho’oponopono include sincerity, “talking from the guts,” a willingness to express emotional truth as well as the facts regarding the conflict (Boggs and Chun 1990, 132). Under the Great Law of Peace each individual is encouraged to treat others as equals, with respect. Thus, in Haudenosaunee conflict transformation each person is expected to express emotions, yet to do so in ways that do not foster resentment or hatred. Participants are to use health of body, mind, and spirit to promote well-being between people and nations (Great Law of Peace 1999). “At its core, American Indian peacemaking is inherently spiritual; it speaks to the connectedness of all things; it focuses on unity, on harmony, on balancing the spiritual, intellectual, emotional, and physical dimensions of a community of people” (LeResche 1993, 321). Haudenosaunee conflict transformation openly addresses the spiritual aspects of human experience. For example, Haudenosaunee processes involve the development of individual power called orenda, the basic spiritual power of each person. The Haudenosaunee state that the Great Law of Peace depends on the individual development of each person’s orenda as it relates to the well-being of the community, the nation, and the confederacy (Great Law of Peace 1999).
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Indigenous methods of conflict transformation are marginalized within the Western discipline of conflict resolution. The Western methods of re solving conflict that are often imported into Indigenous communities are based on an extremely different worldview.
Western societies’ power and willingness to implement their models without consideration of Indigenous worldviews perpetuates ontological violence, the forceful introduction of one worldview to the extent that it marginalizes or suppresses another worldview.
Decolonizing the discipline of conflict resolution involves developing a deeper understanding of, respect for, and acknowledgement of Indigenous worldviews. The decolonizing process also involves creating support for Indigenous people to be able to access conflict transformation processes that are in alignment with Indigenous worldviews.