Transformative Resilience: From Individual Coping to Collective Change

What is it about?

Contemporary resilience discourse is marked by the logic of neoliberal governmentalism, leading some critical scholars to dismiss the concept altogether. Resilience is frequently framed as a personal capacity to adapt, cope, and “bounce back” in the face of adversity, shifting responsibility onto individuals while leaving structural injustices unaddressed. This article challenges the top-down, individualised, and politically detached view of resilience and reimagines it as a collective, transformative force. Drawing on the legacy of Black feminists and women of colour, as well as the embodied counternarratives of today’s social justice practitioners, it calls for a careful analysis of oppressive power dynamics while highlighting the liberating potential of embodiment for resilience and resistance.

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Why is it important?

The findings show that, instead of mere adaptation, embodied resilience emerging within social justice movements provides a foundation for sustainable resistance aimed at dismantling the racialised and gendered power structures rooted in the history of Western colonialism and neoliberal capitalism. Furthermore, the article reveals the complex ways in which language, body, and politics are intertwined. It shows how language can be used politically to redefine and reframe resilience in support of social justice struggles, while also expanding our understanding of knowledge itself by recognising the culturally marginalised body as a source of language and insight, harnessing its felt-sense experience for healing and political liberation.

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