“Embodied forms of knowledge are ways of knowing that are carried, expressed, and transmitted through the body rather than solely through written means. This includes practices like movement, oral storytelling, and other forms of knowledge that are learned through action, senses, and participation.

Traditionally, the written archive has been understood as the most legitimate form of knowledge preservation. Centering documents, official records, and material evidence are all forms that can be cataloged and controlled. As a consequence, embodied forms ofknowledge are often dismissed as fleeting or unreliable rather than recognized as legitimate sites of historical memory.¹ The fundamental failure of the archive emerges when the historian flattens lived experience into detached evidence while ignoring the emotional, physical, and relational dimensions of those lives. It also falsely assumes that the historian stands outside of history, as though their own body, perspective, and power are separate from the subjects they interpret.² In doing so, the traditional archive not only omits important forms of memory, but also perpetuates colonial modes of thinking by separating histories from its communities and the practices that generate them.” (p. 21)

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1. Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Duke University Press, 2003), 16.

2. Lee Edwards, “Cyclical Navigations: In the In Between (Exploring Black Memory Through Embodied Storytelling),” Duke University, 13.