ABSTRACT
The lived experience of the body - that is, the bodily sensations, perceptions, and behaviors - is the essential ground of human identity. Developmentally, the visceral impulses serve as the foundation for personal agency, guiding people as they move through the world, reaching for some things and refusing others. The conceptual framework is the result of a strategic review of the literature in educational theory and practice, anthropology, and traumatology. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the somatic impact of oppression - that is, how people embody oppressive social conditions through nonverbal interactions, and how oppression affects people's relationship with their own body. In documenting the embodied experiences and understandings of people who identify as oppressed, it offers clear descriptions of how oppression is experienced as a bodily "felt sense" and illuminates the mostly unconscious behaviors that perpetuate inequitable social relations.
