Feminist Self-Defense: Working on oneself and collective transformation

Feminist Self-Defense: Working on oneself and collective transformation

Abstract

Feminist self-defense is a practice that mobilizes both corporeal techniques and techniques of the self to give women means of responding to the continuum of forms of violence that they may face. By gaining confidence and assertiveness women incorporate a fighting ethos that produces effects not only in case of an eventual aggression, but also within the different spheres of women’s everyday lives. Feminist self-defense implies work on oneself and collective transformation; hence it is situated at the intersection of the personal and the political. The article examines this dialectic and raises more specifically the question of using the body and violence as political tools.