Editorial

Queering the Soma

Abstract

According to Richard Shusterman, “the body is both shaped by power and employed as an instrument to maintain it—how bodily norms of health, skill, and beauty, and even our categories of sex and gender, are constructed to reflect and sustain social forces” (Shusterman 2020, 247). In this issue, authors consider somatic identities and behaviors that subvert somatic normativity, with a special focus on gender and sexuality. Most work in somaesthetics has been devoted to heteronormative identities, behaviors, and histories. There has been little devoted to those that fall outside this narrow category. This issue is dedicated to intersections between queerness and somaesthetics, broadly construed. Each author supplies a unique perspective on queering that pertains to gender, sexuality, and somaesthetics as a philosophical approach to experience. With this issue, we strive to continue expanding somaesthetics as an inclusive, open-ended, and melioristic approach to inquiry.