Abstract
"There is no doubt that we live in a time of Climate Emergency (Gills and Morgan, 2019). The recent dynamics of protest of the last few years show the reemergence of civil disobedience as a privileged strategy of action among grassroots’ climate movements. Using non-violent collective action, these actors are reconfiguring the way we understand the role of the body in social movements’ organizing. Acknowledging the critical dimension of the orchestration of bodies in non-violent activist organizing where activists collectively experience the world, the self and the other through embodiment (McDonald, 2007), this dissertation offers some insights into the bodily regimes that inform the construction of collective action. Based on the ethnography of an activist movement’ organization in becoming, I argue that collective action’ organizing relies -for its efficacy and sustainability- on the articulation between reflexive coherent activist selves and the inter-corporeal relations they create with others in the environment. First, I examine the relation between corporeality and space in order to understand how multiple bodies synchronize their movements so as to function as one during collective actions. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, this study advances practice-based research on inter-corporeal learning by investigating the underexplored role of lived space in the emergence of a collective body in non-violent performances. It therefore shows how the spatiality of movements unfolds as new ways of inhabiting one’s body as a non-violent activist, allowing for the creation of new forms of relations with others, based on body potentialities but also recognizing its limits. Second, I discuss the culture of self-sacrifice through which activists’ identity is regulated and reveal the everyday tensions between passionate commitment and vulnerable bodies. More specifically, this study explores how body breakdowns lead activists to separate their passion for a cause from the organizational culture and ultimately make their exit. It thus contributes to research on identity regulation by highlighting the precariousness of this process and demonstrating the political potential of bodies to resist controlling regimes. It thereby shows that the construction of coherent reflexive selves is necessary for sustaining collective action. Third, reflecting on my ethnographic journey as an apprentice activist-ethnographer, I examine the relevance of putting one’s body on the line(s) and attending to one’s vulnerability in the field. Through an exploration of my own embodiment while immersed in this movement’ organization, I show how the evolution of my carnal posturing shaped the dynamic of the research situation. In other words, this essay fleshes out the process through which my body guided the way research was problematized and data analyzed, hence crafting my understanding of activism as it was lived, felt and expressed. Shedding light on the cultural dynamics at play and the connections between identity and embodied practice, I end by laying out the implications of a carnal approach to research through bodily engagement in the fields."