Body Geopolitics: Playful Resistance in Transnational Gym Life

When the State seeks to destroy solidarity and fragment community for the purpose of social control, the act of spotting a lifter in the gym, as an everyday enactment of trust and care, becomes resistance to violence. Such scenes of mutual aid unfold several times a week in a community gym on the outskirts of San Salvador, in a neighborhood that has been hard hit by decades of iron fist policing, extrajudicial violence, and most recently, the Salvadoran government's declaration of a 'state of exception.' In this context, I elaborate a concept of body geopolitics and describe its potential antidote: playful resistance. Turning to decolonial feminisms for inspiration, I show how the gym can become a site encouraging play despite entrenched systems of mass incarceration and global apartheid.