Freedom of Movement

How politics intervenes in our embodiment

I had planned to write about shoulder mobility this week, but events surrounding the coronation of the King infuriated me so much that I found myself consumed by other questions. So more mobile ribs and shoulders will have to have to wait for a few days, because today’s post is concerned with how politics shapes our freedom to move. Specifically, I’m interested in what it means to increase our freedom of movement in a political context where freedom is being curtailed.

In Sunday’s Observer, Chloe Naldrett wrote, ‘while the world was looking forward to watching a 74-year-old billionaire receive a sparkly hat, the British state was arresting people for conspiratorially planning to reveal T-shirts and flags.’ While Naldrett was focusing on the events surrounding coronation, her article was fundamentally concerned with the impact of recent Public Order Act - an act of parliament that has radical implications for those planning peaceful protest, and allows the police discretion to arrest protesters before they have committed an offence. On Saturday, this meant that protestors could be arrested without having started their planned and rightful peaceful protests. The freedom of 64 people was curtailed on the basis that they might be planning to disrupt public order. (I think only 4 of those arrested were later charged.)

Beyond the confines of the coronation, there have been plenty of other recent and concerning examples of creeping systemic suppression of individual freedom in the UK. Prior to the Public Order Bill receiving royal ascent, a barrister was threatened with arrest for holding up a blank piece of paper in Parliament Square. The implications of this go far beyond both my expertise and the subject matter of this Substack, but I do think that the ongoing erosion of rights and civil liberties in the UK should give those of us interested in movement and embodiment pause for thought.

Recently, the growing sense of loss I feel with regard to my freedom to travel, or my freedom to stand in opposition to things I disagree with, or to resist the oppressive and unfair systems we inhabit, has made me question what it means to spend so much of my time increasing my capacity for movement and bodily freedom. What good is it being so mobile if I am not permitted to move? What use is my capacity to stand firm if standing firm is prohibited?

I’ve spent a long time as a movement teacher encouraging people to connect with the marvellous natural inheritance of their bodies - encouraging students to find new ways of being and doing. But what does any of this mean if we can’t apply findings from the studio and training room in the rest of our lives? It’s a wonderful thing to be able to run and swim and climb, but the development of these skills can also be experienced as a kind of loss for those who can’t access the sea, the woods or the mountains. (Or public swimming pools, sports centres or playgrounds.)

Not long ago, I spoke to a dance student who experienced his first year of professional training during lockdown. For a prolonged period of time he was forced to do daily technique classes in the tiny kitchen of his shared accommodation. He was inspiringly positive, but I found the image rather heartbreaking. Our chat reminded me of the health and safety advice I’d received when planning online meetings - inviting employees to move away from their desks and computer screen for 5 minutes every hour. I’m not, of course, suggesting that the COVID lockdowns were part of a broader conspiracy. However, I am suggesting that they led to shifts in social behaviour that have proved convenient for those in power. People who stay still in one place are easier to surveil and control.

There is an irony in this shift of behaviour, because relevant mechanisms of the state routinely advise us to engage in regular physical activity. We are told that there is a pandemic of physical inactivity. However, these public health proclamations are often isolated from the broader realities of our lives. Workloads are on the rise, new technologies are continually being developed that reduce the need to move or leave the house, and the cost of going places and doing things is spiralling. We are isolated and often sedentary. It’s not just our rights that our being eroded, it’s also the infrastructure that supports and encourages movement and connection.

The widespread political use of the term ‘physical activity’ is worth reflecting on here. For one thing, I think it’s an easier concept for the state to deal with than movement. Physical activity reduces movement to practices that can be instrumentally related to health and wellbeing. Physical activity can be surveilled, measured and evaluated with reference to criteria relevant to the study of public health and health economics. While I’m not dismissing the importance of these things. I am suggesting that they are only a small part of a much bigger and more interesting picture.

Our bodies and our movement go beyond paradigms of health and longevity. They are the fabric of our experience and the means by which we occupy the world. Because of this, we can choose to recognise our bodies as sites of heterogeneity. A man standing in Parliament Square with a blank piece of paper is both a symbol and a manifestation of difference. His presence poses a question. He is an embodiment of the fact that the story being performed by the architecture of the establishment might not be comprehensive. He demonstrates the fact that the world looks different from different vantage points. He demonstrates that the bodies inside parliament experience a different point of view to the bodies outside.

In other words, where you stand and where you move means something. Movement is not just an activity, it is not just exercise, it is a form of agency and a way of wielding power. And if we do it together, it becomes more powerful.

It’s worth reflecting on whether the Public Order Act, online working, the physical activity agenda and technologies that allow shopping to be delivered straight to our doorstep are different parts of one strategy to restrict our movement and our agency - preventing us from moving together or negotiating solidarity. Lonely bodies can easily be turned into homogenous bodies. In isolation, our lives can be made to fit into the prevailing narratives of those in power. If you haven’t seen anyone face-to-face today, it’s difficult to know whether it’s true that the majority of us desperately want to ‘stop the boats’ as the prime-minister frequently claims.

To prevent people from occupying space is one way of preventing them from performing difference. It is to deny the rights of certain bodies in certain places. It’s one way that those in power use to make the world seem flatter and neater than it really is. It’s a tool to make people feel less than they are.

So this week’s lesson is about how public space makes you feel. It’s about what your body means in places of systemic power. It’s about thinking about movement not as a form of physical activity, but as a mode of critical inquiry.

I’ve recorded the lesson with the idea that you’re lying down, but it would work in sitting too.