Somatic Sovereignty: Body as Territory in Colombia's Legión del Afecto

Abstract

Responding to decades of conflict in Colombia, a social initiative known as the Legión del Afecto began in Medellín as a peacebuilding effort among academics, community leaders, and young activists. Attention to the body, particularly bodily feelings, sensations, and emotions, has been central to the peacebuilding methodology of the Legión. The initiative has used a focus on the body not only to produce alternative practices of territory that help keep people alive but also (and therein) to materialize the possibility of feeling differently within targeted spaces. What ultimately drives collective action in the Legión is the possibility for increased autonomy over spatial structures of feeling. The ways in which body and territory have been merged in the initiative echo wider trends regarding territory as a theme in Latin American social movements.