Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters

422 Pages·2017·1.912 MB·English

by  Luna Dolezal, Danielle Petherbridge

Body/Self/Other

Body/Self/Other
THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF SOCIAL ENCOUNTERS
Edited by
Luna Dolezal and
Danielle Petherbridge
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatso-
ever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including
electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, record-
ing, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Jenn Bennett
Marketing, Fran Keneston
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Dolezal, Luna, editor | Petherbridge, Danielle, editor
Title: Body/self/other : the phenomenology of social encounters / Luna
Dolezal and Danielle Petherbridge, editors.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, 2017. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016041360 (print) | LCCN 2017033666 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781438466217 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438466224
(e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Interpersonal relations—Philosophy. | Other
(Philosophy) | Phenomenology.
Classification: LCC HM1106 (ebook) | LCC HM1106 .B635 2017
(print) | DDC 142/.7—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016041360
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Reconsidering the Phenomenology of Social 1
Encounters
Luna Dolezal and Danielle Petherbridge

PART I EMBODIED POLITICS:
ENCOUNTERING RACE AND VIOLENCE
1 The Body and Political Violence: Between Isolation 21
and Homogenization
Rosalyn Diprose
2 A Critical Phenomenology of Solidarity and Resistance 47
in the 2013 California Prison Hunger Strikes
Lisa Guenther
3 Sedimented Attitudes and Existential Responsibilities 75
Gail Weiss

4 Racializing Perception and the Phenomenology of Invisibility 103
Danielle Petherbridge
PART II RELATIONALITY,
ETHICS, AND THE OTHER

5 Social Interaction, Autonomy, and Recognition 133
Shaun Gallagher
vi CONTENTS
6 The Weight of Others: Social Encounters and an Ethics 161
of Reading
Donald A. Landes
7 Linguistic Encounters: The Performativity of Active Listening 185
Beata Stawarska
8 Wonder as the Primary Passion: A Phenomenological 209
Perspective on Irigaray’s Ethics of Difference
Sara Heinämaa
9 Merleau-Ponty on Understanding Other Others 237
Katherine J. Morris
PART III EMBODIMENT, SUBJECTIVITY,
AND INTERCORPOREALITY
10 Lived Body, Intersubjectivity, and Intercorporeality: 269
The Body in Phenomenology
Dermot Moran
11 Phenomenology and Intercorporeality in the Case of 311
Commercial Surrogacy
Luna Dolezal
12 Agoraphobia, Sartre, and the Spatiality of the Look 337
Dylan Trigg
13 Intercorporeal Expression and the Subjectivity of Dementia 359
Lisa Folkmarson Käll
Notes on Contributors 387
Index 393
Acknowledgments
The editors wish to gratefully acknowledge the support of the Irish Research
Council and the European Commission (Marie Curie Actions) for funding
the research projects from which this book has arisen. We would also like
to thank Andrew Kenyon, our editor at SUNY, for his support, David Markwell
for copyediting, and our anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments
on each chapter and an earlier draft of this manuscript.
vii

Introduction
RECONSIDERING THE PHENOMENOLOGY
OF SOCIAL ENCOUNTERS
Luna Dolezal and Danielle Petherbridge
The essays collected in Body/Self/Other: The Phenomenology of Social Encounters
examine the lived experience of our relations with others as well as the
complexity of embodied interaction and forms of sociality. Deploying phe-
nomenology along with a variety of other philosophical approaches, including
critical theory, social philosophy, feminist theory, and post-structuralism,
the contributions in this book describe and critically interrogate existential,
material, and normative features of self-other relations in a range of contexts
with contemporary significance. The book questions, for example, what
it is to perceive or be perceived in terms of race, gender, sexuality, animal-
ity, criminality, or medicalized forms of subjectivity. If these are habitual
patterns or attitudes built up in everyday experience within our lifeworlds,
how do we transform, or even rupture, these perceptions and experiences?
Moreover, if we, as social beings, are constituted through intersubjective
relations, what are the costs of the absence of this relationality in conditions
of isolation or imprisonment, or, why might such relations manifest fear and
anxiety in public space or in old age? Moreover, what is the nature of our
intercorporeality and what ethical obligations, if any, does the fact of our
embodied relationality imply for us?
Following the work of philosophers such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice
Merleau-Ponty, and Jean-Paul Sartre, phenomenology has articulated various
aspects of self-other relations making salient the intercorporeal and consti-
tutive nature of our encounters with others. This book significantly extends
1