nanopolitics handbook - Minor Compositions

others and ourselves. A sense of endless stretchability and capability may bereflecting the self-confidence of the enlightened or materialist individual will.But also, it may be reflecting that incurable desire to rebel against the inhibitionsof a protestant body or the oppressive constraints of the catholicism sorooted in our bodies and morals, so pervasive in the sentimental educationand habitus of many of us, especially Southern and Central Europeans. Yet,for the first time, through the body and the words of the other, I acknowledgethe impassability of some boundaries. This is not about lacking the rebellious,revolutionary passion to dare. This is rather about the capacity to observe andlisten to another affective embodied history, connected but separate, differentfrom mine.It is also, deeply, about gender. And how gendered is that history of boundary-drawing,boundary-violation, and openness.Thus, it is not a coincidence that I end up in the session’s working groupon gender and sexualities.There are indeed so many other interesting discussions to join in relationto borders and contact: e.g. how to expand nanopolitics beyond our relativelyprivileged and self-enclosed communities? How are we thinking aboutdifferences among us, who can and who cannot (afford to 4 ) do a nanopoliticsworkshop, what are the limits to experimenting with our bodies? Impairedbodies, (impaired hearts!), disabilities, identity politics, othering, self-othering,them/us, intersectional differentiation…But despite all the possible points of focus and discussion regarding thissession, I choose the working group on gender and sexuality here. It is forme the most vivid memory of that session of contact improvisation, the mostenjoyable in a way and the one I remember challenged me most.We start with talking thoughts and how differently concepts of bodiesand their possibilities, openness and closeness are understood in relation tosexuality. What came out of that initial conversation? For instance that ‘men’perceive sexual boundaries so differently to ‘women’. This might seem obvious,yet is it simply a way of seeing yourself or how you are supposed to bein relation to ‘your gender’? Are ‘ladies’ expected to be careful with exposingtheir bodies and to protect them, while the male body is it still supposed to beprotecting the female body? What about queer experiments with your ownbody and the other’s? What about the freedom of doing whatever you wantwith your body, reclaiming it against the state and the family, against the heteronormativematrix?We end the workshop with an exercise of wordy rolling bodies in anotherbig room just for us. This is the most difficult task of all: moving whiletalking. It is, most essentially, a stream of consciousness, of overlapping,147