Moving as a ‘scrawny, brown body’: navigating sticky emotional geographies of physical activity in Singapore

Abstract

Recent studies on emotional geographies of physical activity have furnished valuable insights into the affective and emotional intensities of space in mediating physical activity engagements. Nevertheless, I suggest there is potential in departing from an ahistorical treatment of emotion to critically consider how people’s health engagements are mediated by their sticky emotional relations to space stretching over multiple space-times. I bring these ideas to life through an empirical exploration of physical activity engagements in Singapore that involved in-depth interviews with 17 fitness trainers and diaries from 22 fitness participants. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s idea of ‘sticky emotions’, I argue that people’s physical activity engagements are not just mediated by the immediate affective intensities of space such as energies and atmospheres. Equally importantly, their access to physical activity spaces is also profoundly shaped by their sticky emotional histories and memories of racism, misogyny, and sizism, amongst others. However, instead of theorising minority health subjects through a discourse of passivity and victimhood, I also explore how they could actively ‘unstick’ their bodies from public exercising spaces to create socially fitting environments. This paper emphasises that paying attention to sticky emotions could sharpen a feminist sensitivity to power geometries that are necessarily entwined with people’s health engagements. Accordingly, it aims to develop an ethical corrective to understanding issues of health access, particularly amongst minority communities.

Keywords:

• Intersectionality
• physical activity
• race
• Singapore
• social justice
• sticky emotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Siew Ying Shee

Siew Ying Shee received her Master of Social Sciences by Research from the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. The findings in this paper draws from her Master’s research on embodied health politics in Singapore.