ABSTRACT
Bodily experience is a complex, generally unconscious process involving the coordination of diverse sensory inputs and information—primarily visual, proprioceptive, physiognomic, and motor systems. The body, too, carries a reflexive capacity, a way of reacting to the world by how “we sense ourselves sensing the world.” The conscious process of proprioception provides us with knowledge of the intersubjective forces that direct, (re)position, and control our body. The proprioception as well as kinesthetic feelings of race developed a bodily timidity, which came from experiences—occurring in the physical and mental processes of recollection or through a “knowledge-embodied process”—of having my body, regularly, regulated and moved as an object of the sensory modalities of whiteness. The phenomenology of the body is a necessary starting point to consider its varied physical sensations shaping, managing, and controlling the way people of color interact with white people in the world.
