Listening Evocations or Evocative Listening

This chapter explores Resmaa Menakem’s concept of somatic abolition, an embodied philosophy of resourcing energies held within the body to heal from ancestral trauma. It is an unfolding commitment to ontologically understand the South Asian body – situated within the context of a student navigating an elite institution – and informed by an interest in intimacy coordination. An intimacy coordinator serves to support actors performing in intimate or sexual scenes, ensuring their physical and emotional well-being throughout the creative process. Somatic abolition and intimacy coordination are relatively new within their fields, emerging from different traditions and branches of knowledge. What could happen if these two phenomena are brought into conversation? How might the personal experiences, challenges, and reflections of an actor support a kind of theoretical reframing? Here lies the central point of contribution. With the support of Barad, Derrida, Marx, and Foucault, this thesis proposes alternate modes of being that open up radically different ways of engaging in the world.