Crisis and Body Politics in Twenty-First Century Cultural Production

This vibrant collection is timely and forceful in its address of the manifold crisis of capital and ecology unfolding in the late neoliberal era. Mobilizing and extending Verónica Gago’s concept of body-territory in salutary new ways, the essays in the volume are exciting in their interdisciplinary range, bringing together important strands of feminist and environmental thought to offer powerful critiques of the intertwined forces of capitalist accumulation, extractivism, racism, and heteropatriarchal and colonial violence in different global geographies. Crucially, they focus on bodies as not only sites of oppression, but also foreground the ‘protesting body’ as figure and material agent in territories of resistance and insubordination, both in the form of organized politics and collectivities and in the realms of culture, philosophy, and aesthetics.

Sharae Deckard, Lecturer in World Literature at the School of English, Drama, and Film University College Dublin, Ireland

This book is essential reading for our politically uncertain times. With its ambitious scope and masterful execution, Spear and Sinclair have curated a vital collection of chapters that explore the body as a central terrain of resistance and refusal. The authors delve deep into our contemporary perma-crisis, compelling us to rethink the concept of ‘crisis’ and the complex webs of socio-ecological violence spanning the past, present, and future. From ecological breakdown to oceanic geographies, and from extractive violence to postcolonial spaces, this book provides an eye-opening and timely perspective. By intersecting gender, race, and coloniality, the authors reveal the profound entanglements between bodies and territories, human and extra-human natures, posing critical questions about embodied ways of knowing and resisting structural violence. Spear and Sinclair guide readers through an incisive critique of this political moment and the uneven histories that shape it. I highly recommend Crisis and Body Politics in Twenty-first Century Cultural Landscapes: Territorial Bodies for anyone seeking to understand the complex dynamics of our era.

Thom Davies, Associate Professor in Geography, University of Nottingham and co-editor of Toxic Truths

Drawing inspiration from the Latin American feminist thinking of body-territory, Crisis and Body Politics brings together an exciting variety of different analyses of spatialised embodiment. This extraordinary book more than delivers on its promise to reconstruct our ways of seeing the multivalent crises that mark our times.

Illan Wall, Lecturer, School of Law, University of Galway, Ireland

Territorial Bodies offers exciting new perspectives on the interrelations of territory, embodiment, culture, and the environment. Globally diverse in its geographical foci and innovative in its theoretical approaches, the book persuasively locates the body as the site where our age’s multiple crises intersect. Scholars in a variety of fields – from literature and visual culture to geography, postcolonial theory, and gender studies – will find important insights into bodies as and in spaces of crisis in this wide-ranging yet meticulously organized volume.

Paul Crosthwaite, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literature, University of Edinburgh, Scotland

Territorial Bodies features a provocative chorus of voices that offers a much-needed insight into embodied experiences of gender and racial violence, dispossession, and colonial displacement across the globe. At its core is the Latin American feminist concept of ‘body-territory’, the idea that lands and bodies are entangled and mutually constituted. The cultural narratives explored here compellingly contest the neoliberal notion of the body as individual property and celebrate the vibrant alliances formed by human and more-than-human bodies. That makes this carefully edited book an essential contribution to debates about the current ecological and political crisis.

Jordana Blejmar, Senior Lecturer in Visual Media and Cultural Studies, University of Liverpool, UK