In their research project, 'Taking it easy: Rest as resistance by racialised bodies in the USA', Dr Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits and PhD researcher Xander Creed explore embodied practices for peace and justice in the context of the ‘post-racial’ yet still violently racist United States of America.
This violence emerges in direct forms, such as police brutality, as well as structural features, such as the criminal justice system which refuses to prosecute police officers, which in turn both create and target racialized populations. Concurrently, inequalities remain entrenched along varying faultlines including but not limited to class, gender, employment, sexuality and nationality.
Drawing from radical feminist approaches towards peace, the project explores the ways in which the human form - the body - serves as both a site of conflict and domination and, more importantly, as a site of peace and liberation.
The power of rest as political resistance
Relying on data from the Nap Ministry as part of a movement founded by Poet, performance artist and theologist Tricia Hersey and primary data collected from three community encounters in Ohio with a group of predominantly African-American women performance artists, this project aims to advance understanding of rest as a means of political resistance and reparations for historically marginalized populations.
Founded on the traditions of Black womanism, Afrofuturism and Black liberation, the Nap Ministry highlights how rest has been historically denied to Black and other marginalized populations in the USA and has been part of upholding the grind culture.
The Nap Ministry's manifesto serves not only as an important source of data but also as a way of theorizing rest, in the forms of naps, and other forms of intentional rest as embodied creative alternatives for healing from racialized violence and injustices.
As part of this project, Shyamika and Xander have partnered with artists located in Cincinnati, Ohio, who engage in various forms of embodied creative expression. Together, they explore how embodiment, the practice of intentionally inhabiting oneself, combines both the physical and mental-psychological dimensions to come to a state of rest, or peace.
Funding
This project receives funding from the International Institute of Social Studies.
- PhD student
- Assistant professor
- More information
Project events
The upcoming events for the project include one public open access cultural event at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and a community workshop at the College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning at the University of Cincinnati focused on embodiment practices of peace. More details about the upcoming events and the artists.