Embodying Care: Practicing Pleasure-Based Scholarship

Lena Chen
Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies
UC Berkeley

As a group of queer and BIPOC scholars, we ask how a methodology of pleasure can help us better sustain ourselves, our bodies, and our psyches in and beyond the academy. Our project builds upon the pleasure turn in Black feminist studies to recognize the body as a site of knowledge as well as a repository for pain. Amidst trauma and crisis, we chart a path from damage-centered research toward what Eve Tuck calls a “desire-based framework,” in order to articulate desires for liberation, world-building, and justice. Collaborating with artists, organizers, and somatic/healing practitioners, we investigate embodied practices of pleasure and care that can be incorporated into our own work. Our project will result in a public program or exhibition that presents our findings for colleagues and a general audience.