Spinning Outside of Our Selves: Pole Dance, Materiality, and Embodied Existence Beyond Colonial Binaries

Abstract

In this essay, I analyze three embodied experiences of pole dance: spinning movement, the continual material relationship between the pole and the body, and the unique movements of pole dance. I argue that these material experiences support an expansion of embodied existence beyond the foundational colonial binary of otherness: human/nature. My analysis illuminates how this is possible and provides conceptual understandings of material processes that enable reconfigurations of visual perception, embodied relations, and expansion beyond the colonial boundary of the “self.” These findings can support further research into how a more just future can be created and embodied.