Notes for Decolonizing Embodiment

In this essay, I offer notes toward decolonizing embodiment through an examination of the concept of embodied arts and its potential to exceed and productively destabilize theatrical scholarship. I begin with a discussion of embodiment as the key term underpinning the notion of embodied arts. In the second section, I survey some recent examples of decolonial thought, asking how these works both rely upon and trouble the idea of embodiment as previously defined. Finally I confront a difficult problem that demands attention from performance studies, embodiment theory, and decolonial praxis alike: the (im)possibility of decolonizing white bodies.