Sites of social and environmental injustice have also been sites of healing justice and somatic justice in urban United States context: from "healing salons" in aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to restorative circles amid Black Lives Matter protests. As a framework and a movement, healing justice addresses collective and historical trauma among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color with particular attention to reimagining movements themselves (Piepzna-Samarasinha 2016; Healing Justice Project 2022). Relatedly, social justice grounded in somatics considers how (healing) trauma is socially-situated, relational, and embodied (Johnson 2017; Menakem 2017). In this paper or offering/ofrenda, I reflect on the discursive geographies of healing justice and somatic justice. These geographies are shaped by practitioners, collectives, and funders in complex ways; they take many forms, including spoken, written, and non-verbal, arts-based expression. With attention to two overarching discourses in urban healing justice and somatic justice context, I propose that changemakers grounded in these movements mutually articulate emancipatory futures while inviting attention to how those futures can be felt. Indeed, practitioners emphasize how emancipatory futures must be felt - sensed, known, embodied - to materialize. However, prevailing discourses also raise important questions about the limitations and possibilities of centering trauma in “the work.” As a Black/Blaxicana scholar-practitioner, I frame this paper as an ofrenda to emphasize collective analysis. Throughout, I incorporate opportunities for embodied or somatic inquiry as we bear witness to discursive artifacts from healing and somatic justice spaces. With intentional attention to knowledge produced through/by grassroots activists and practitioners, this piece further considers what non-traditional scholarship brings to the analysis of urban trauma.
Mots clés : trauma|urban|race|healing|social movements
A105576NJ