Alyson K. Spurgas, Madhuri Sastry and Bhakti Shringarpure unpack the dark side of wellness, self-care and yoga industries.
Celebrity wellness influencer Gwenyth Paltrow recently shocked the world with an ad selling real estate in Israel even as the settler colonial state’s genocide of Palestinians is being documented in real time. India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi instituted an International Yoga Day for the world while being engaged in fascism, censorship and violence towards Indian Muslims at home. Tradwife influencers stand for wholesome and healthy lifestyles alongside the notion that women should hark back to an idyllic time when white, Christian, male supremacy prevailed. There has been outrage about Israeli soldiers who spend their R&R traveling around India pursuing meditation, wellness and spirituality after committing genocide at home. The global wellness industry is priced at $6.8 trillion having doubled in size from just a decade ago. It is a big dirty business and this conversation unpacks it’s complicity with racism, fascism, patriarchy and violence. The hosts discuss these issues at length and ask we pay heed to Audre Lorde’s famous comment on self-care that has been misused in the last many years: ““Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
Watch here!
References:
Decolonize Self-Care by Alyson K. Spurgas and Zoe Meleo-Erwin: https://orbooks.com/catalog/decolonize-self-care/
“Notes of an Ambivalent Yogi” by Bhakti Shringarpire https://evergreenreview.com/read/notes-of-an-ambivalent-yogi/
“Hindutva Gets Sugarcoated Through Pop Culture Sensations While Fascism Continues Its Rise” by Madhuri Sastry https://wyvarchive.com/hindutva-gets-sugarcoated-through-pop-culture-sensations-while-fascism-continues-its-rise/
From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures by Lara Sheehi https://www.plutobooks.com/product/from-the-clinic-to-the-streets/
Omwashing Yoga: Weaponized Spirituality in India, Israel, and the US by Sheena Sood https://sheenashining.com/
Combat Trauma: Imaginaries of War and Citizenship in post-9/11 America by Nadia Abu El Haj https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/994-combat-trauma
L’Oreal: Makeup for Israeli Apartheid! https://bdsmovement.net/news/l%25E2%2580%2599oreal-makeup-israeli-apartheid-0
Alyson K. Spurgas is writer, researcher and Associate Professor of Sociology at Trinity College (Hartford). She is the author of Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century (2020) and the co-author of Decolonize Self-Care (2022).
Madhuri Sastry is a writer and editor with a background in human rights law. She is the Culture Editor at The Polis Project and has written for Bitch Media, Slate, Catapult and Guernica, among several other publications.
Bhakti Shringarpure is a writer, editor and creative director of the Radical Books Collective.
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