Shielding offers a collection of conceptual approaches through which bodies, intentionally or involuntarily, become shields. Bodies take on an ambivalent status in the process: they serve as protection or a buffer and express resistance. At the same time, they turn and are turned into weapons when they intervene on the ground and politically, in war, conflicts, and through activism. The contributors address the idea of bodily integrity, both in a material sense and with regard to the symbolic and ethical relations that a body entangles. The book engages with ongoing debates around the re-evaluation of corporeality and embodiment in contemporary socio-political contexts.
