The (counter)investment in the body as a site of need, desire, and pleasure and the constancy of unmet needs, repressed desires, and the shortcomings of pleasure are articulated in the very endeavor to heal the flesh and redress the pained body.
Saidiya Hartman
Challenging the colonial world is not a rational confrontation of viewpoints. It is not a discourse on the universal, but the impassioned claim by the colonized that their world is fundamentally different.
Fanon
NEXT OFFERING – JANUARY 2025
Practicing Extimacy in the Embodied Political Field:
10-Month Online Intensive
FOR MORE INFO OR ENROLLMENT: kefikes (@) gmail (dot) com
Meeting Times: 10:15am* to 3:15pm PST
[1st day of Module 1 begins @ 9:30am]
SEQUENCE I:
Political Theory as Sensory Praxis
Module 1: Jan 4-5, 2025 (Sat-Sun)
Module 2: Feb 15-16, 2025 (Sat-Sun)
Module 3: Mar 22-23, 2025 (Sat-Sun)
SEQUENCE II:
Feeling, Writing, & Co-narrating
Racial-Gendered Existence
Module 4: May 3-4, 2025 (Sat-Sun)
Module 5: June 14-15, 2025 (Sat-Sun)
Module 6: July 26-27-28, 2025 (Sat-Sun-Mon)
SEQUENCE III:
Political Extimacy as Praxis
Module 7: Sept 5-6-7-8, 2025 (Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon)
Module 8: Oct 17-18-19-20, 2025 (Fri-Sat-Sun-Mon)
PROCESS DESCRIPTION
“History is already seated in the chair,
in the empty room where one arrives…”
– Dionne Brand –
The ‘Practicing Political Extimacy‘ process – inspired by black feminist and existential thought – is an online intensive that is experiential, existential, and theoretical. Its purpose is to facilitate co-processing the weight of uncontained racialization in the wake of desired changes that are yet to come. We’re living a collective, psychic moment of urgency – the kind that has historically created space for paradigm shifting – where there’s intense desire by many for radical social change, on the one hand, and fiery frustrations around the slowness of systemic change, on the other. And, if race – in its manifestations through flesh, gender, sex, ability, labor, time, technologies, borders, citizenship, geographies, ecologies, religion, and more – operates in practice as a sanctioned relational field that psychically and materially forecloses transcendence of violence, we reproduce the violence that is race – again and again, independent of our locations or intentions – when we’re relationally misattuned to the affective, racialized bindings that psychopolitically supersede our encounters with each other. To this end, this online intensive supports engagement in what will be called the interim: an existential space between the violences yet to be disrupted and repaired, and our unknown collective potential.
Our method involves learning to collaboratively track and thus disrupt the things, ideas, and practices that relationally manifest racial-gender as the recognizable terms of existence in everyday interaction. We draw upon a practice of embodied political theory – creating and combining everyday skills that integrate somatic awareness and social theorization – to co-confront the violent mundanities of racialization in everyday encounters, as an exploratory way through, to something. Such requires expressed awareness that the stakes and consequences of engagement are inherently uneven for those inhabiting racialized and racializing locations because we continue to co-exist in an unrepaired, colonial-capitalist world. Neutrality does not exist here and thus neither are the solidarity spaces that we co-build. The Practicing Political Extimacy process is thus about co-exploring conditions that may/might support the option to choose to show-up vulnerably, under consequentially uneven terms, as an unpracticed political path. Here there are no guarantees; and yet not exploring the unknown feels unsustainable.
*Note: Extimacy is a psychoanalytic term from Jacques Lacan; its purpose is to disrupt opposition between what is internally experienced as personal vs. external. The ‘Practicing Political Extimacy’ process dislodges this term from the individual psyche; it is politicized to refer to the interstitial, uncertain spaces between people, or the relational field. This process – inspired in part by James Baldwin’s interactive presencing of liberal hypocrisy in racializing encounters – offers an experiential praxis that facilitates shared meta-attunement to the trifling work of racial-gender in (inter)action. Such may potentiate transformative socialities, or unknown and unlived co-thinking and co-sensing, that interrupt the familiar, communicative “plantation” practices that impede liberatory goals.
FAQs
(a) Who is this process for and how do I know if my experience level is appropriate for enrollment?
This is an advanced course and upon completion of the registration form there’s a sharing process to further support identifying one’s preparatory experiences. This process is designed for folks who have personal and/or professional experience attending to race and racial-gender within social care, political, therapeutic, and/or artistic work. Such experience includes extensive work around one’s own political location. For BIPOC-identifying participants, this involves long-term and ongoing engagement with one’s subjective experience of racial-gendered existence. For white-identifying participants, this involves long-term and ongoing engagement with one’s subjective experience of occupying a racializing location, such that Otherness is decreasingly sourced as the site for one’s political awareness. Past participants have included activists, artists, healers, and educators. Anyone contemplating participation is welcome to connect with me before considering registration.
(b) Given the somatic & embodiment components, how much of the course is somatic and how much is theoretical?
Somatics and political theory are intended to be held inseparably in this process. The somatic practices explored in each module do more than support capacity to choose to remain present within the relational container and in relationship with the material. Specifically, navigation of militarized norms is a somatic process unto itself – whether conscious or not – meaning the body and embodiment processes are never individuating, but rather always in political dialogue with the events and stakes at hand. Thus the somatic component builds space for tracking how bodies necessarily navigate what’s relationally felt or activated but unnamed in daily interactions. Relatedly, theory supports engaged meta-awareness of the infinite ways that racial-gender situates everyday existence and thus every relational field. Shared is thus a process that bridges the two as unified, mutuating praxis, where sensing and sense-meaning are not separate. That said, because of the authoritarian status of academia and “ intelligencia”, most folks’ first introductions to theory are harmful and thus traumatic. The Eximacy process holds this reality: theory is approached experientially as an unfinished, imaginal project that we inject, contest, and transform in the service of collaborative praxis, in sensorial and cognitive ways.
(c) Given the theoretical component, how much reading is assigned and what happens if I fall behind with the assigned reading or have problems integrating it?
There are 8 modules which are approximately 6 weeks apart from each other. For modules 1 through 6 there’s approximately 150 to 325 pages of assigned reading. As the flow of everyday living is not predictable, there may be moments when you’re ahead of the reading and others when you’re behind. To stay up to date, and to support engagement with the Extimacy process in-between modules, I recommend slow, weekly engagement with the assigned materials to support integration at a sustainable pace. As well, know that you’ll be fine if you’re one module behind and have the space in your life to double-up the next time. The course container will be impacted, however, if you’re behind 2 or more modules. Please note that a guide will be provided on how to read the material. This will include ways to integrate the material on your own terms, in relation to 1) how you learn best, and 2) any previous experiences with engaging theory. Further, anyone enrolled can contact me between modules to process and clarify the reading.
(d) What happens if I need to miss one or more days?
Everyone is permitted to miss 3 days total. One of these days can be during Module 6 (a 3-day process), but ideally everyone is present for each day during Modules 7 & 8 (both being 4-day processes); missed attendance, given the nature of the exercises in Modules 6 through 8, will jeopardize the container. Unexpected emergencies will be held on a case-by-case basis and in the service of the group process and container.
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