FeminisT Phenomenology

This chapter charts the field-defining contributions to feminist phenomenology made by Simone de Beauvoir, Iris Marion Young, Sandra Lee Bartky, and Judith Butler and discusses how their work has been influenced by, critically intervened in, and transformed traditional phenomenology. Drawing on their work as well as the recent work of contemporary feminist phenomenologists such as Lisa Guenther, Sara Ahmed, Linda Martín Alcoff, Mariana Ortega, and Gayle Salamon, the chapter emphasizes that feminist phenomenology is a critical phenomenology. Not only does it directly engage specific social and political issues, eschewing the alleged universality and value-neutrality of traditional phenomenological accounts, but it is also in dialogue with, and immeasurably enriched by the multi- and interdisciplinary fields of critical race theory, prison studies, trans studies, queer theory, and disability studies.

IN DEFENSE OF FEMINIST PHENOMENOLOGY: LIVED BODY, FACTICITY AND THE PROBLEM OF ESSENTIALISM

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the main themes and concepts cultivated in the intersection between phenomenology and feminism, as well as to introduce some of the authors whose research has impacted the field. To that effect, I first analyze the seminal works which helped consolidate the discipline that would come to be known as “feminist phenomenology”, focusing next on relevant notions to the topic at hand, such as the concepts of lived body and facticity. In doing so, I intend to show that, even though phenomenology itself may have been charged with engendering essentialist arguments, the possibility of further non-essentialist unfolding within a phenomenological framework can contribute a great deal to the solution to a number of laborious, yet central deadlocks currently plaguing feminism as a theory as much as a political movement.

Hacer espacio: Museos y feminismos = Making Space: Museums and Feminisms

En este artículo desarrollamos una propuesta teórica que expone y se interroga sobre algunas de las prácticas posibles de un museo que se piensa feminista. Bajo nuestra perspectiva, la inclusión de obras de artistas mujeres no solo tiene que ver con la premisa de incorporar a un colectivo invisibilizado sino que su importancia, sobre todo, radica en la transformación de los modelos de hacer historia y su impugnación a la construcción de un relato simplificado, autorreferencial, teleológico-desarrollista, etnocéntrico y patriarcal. Desarrollamos nuestro planteamiento a través de la discusión de cinco conceptos: reunir, proponer, mantener, contar y divagar. En la segunda parte del artículo nos detenemos extensamente en el último concepto, divagar, al ser una propuesta propia que tiene que ver con una aproximación al museo desde la fenomenología feminista. Pensamos que las intersecciones entre espacio, práctica artística y feminismo pueden proporcionar lecturas ricas y renovadoras para los museos. En esta ocasión, trazamos un recorrido a través de dos figuras: la flâneuse y la exiliada. Ambas desvelan algunos aspectos de las relaciones históricas entre espacio y mujeres y de forma activa combaten el espacio patriarcal con sus ausencias/presencias.AbstractIn this article we develop a theoretical proposal that exposes and questions possible museum practices framed as feminist ones. From our perspective, the inclusion of works by women artists in museum displays certainly has to do with the premise of incorporating an invisible collective. However above all, its importance lies in its ability to transform models for making history and the challenge implicit in the construction of a simplified, self-referential, teleological-developmental, ethnocentric and patriarchal narrative. We develop our approach through the discussion of five actions linked to museum practice: to gather, to propose, to maintain, to tell and to digress. In the second part of the article, we dwell extensively on the last concept, «to digress», and its importance in our own proposals that outline an approach to the museum that is rooted in feminist phenomenology. We think that the intersections between space, artistic practice and feminism can provide rich and renewing readings of and interactions with museums. On this occasion, we trace a journey through two figures: the flâneuse and the exiled. Both reveal aspects of the historical relationships between women and space and women while also actively combatting patriarchal spaces marked by different absences/presences.

Why feminist technoscience and feminist phenomenology should engage with each other: on subjectification/subjectivity

Feminist technoscience and feminist phenomenology have seldom been brought into dialogue with each other, despite them sharing concerns with subjectivity and normativity, and despite both of them moving away from sharp subject-object distinctions. This is unfortunate. This article argues that, while differences between these strands need to be acknowledged, such differences should be put to productive use. The article discusses a case of school bullying, and suggests that bringing these analytic perspectives together enables and sharpens examinations of the role of subjectification and subject positions for subjectivity in the phenomenological sense; affectivity within material-discursive entanglements and constellations of humans and things, and as connecting the body, things and the world in specific ways; and normativity as enacted, lived and embedded in perception.

Why ‘normal’ feels so bad: violence and vaginal examinations during labour – a (feminist) phenomenology

In this article, I argue that many women lack the epistemic resources that would allow them to recognise the practice of vaginal examinations during childbirth as violent or as unnecessary and potentially declinable. I address vaginal examinations during childbirth as a special case of obstetric violence, in which women frequently lack the epistemic resources necessary to recognise the practice as violent not only because of the inherent difficulty of recognising violence that happens in an ‘essentially benevolent’ setting such as the medical one, but also, and mainly, due to the pervasive sexual reification of women under patriarchy and the pervasive shame to which women are subjected. My argument is that the practice of vaginal examinations is indeed experienced – bodily apprehended – as violent by many women, but that full epistemic recognition of this violence is frequently obstructed because the experience perfectly coincides with the normal phenomenological situation of women within patriarchy and thus cannot really be framed as violent. A phenomenological analysis presenting the embodied experience of women under patriarchy as always already essentially tied to sexual availability and commodification, and to shame, will explain this epistemological impairment. A phenomenological take on Judith Butler’s distinction between ‘recognition’ and ‘apprehension’ informs my analysis: I deploy it to provide a richer, more nuanced response to the question of why vaginal examinations are not fully recognised and expressed as violent – even when they are, frequently, apprehended as such. Furthermore, Butler’s ideas about the epistemic ‘framings’ through which we make sense of different kinds of lives (grievable versus ungrievable) will help me to explain how the patriarchal sexual reification of women in fact already frames sexual violence as not-violence – which ultimately also prevents labouring women (and obstetrics staff) from recognising vaginal examinations during labour as violence.

Erotic Extortion: Understanding the Cultural Propagation of Revenge Porn

Revenge porn is a growing problem in current U.S. media culture. According to the Data & Society Institute, one in 10 women under the age of 30 have been victims of or threatened with having their private sexually explicit images shared with the public without their consent. Most of the current research on revenge porn is from a legal perspective, dealing with issues of privacy and copyright. This article uses feminist phenomenology to explore the cultural influences of revenge porn, specifically the prevalence of the male gaze and male voyeurism in mainstream media. Understanding how revenge porn is situated in culture will allow for a better understanding of potential sites of resistance. This article argues for critical pedagogy and media literacy as possible solutions.

Making Her Time (and Time Again): Feminist Phenomenology and Form in Recent British and Irish Fiction Written by Women

This article reads Ali Smith’s 2014 novel How to Be Both alongside Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk (2016) and Sally Rooney’s Conversations with Friends (2017). Using Lauren Berlant’s conception of neoliberal “crisis subjectivity” and Sara Ahmed’s vision of feminist wonderment as an antidote to the neoliberal “promise of happiness,” it argues that each novel considers what might be salvaged and what might grow from situations in which young women become attuned to their mutual incarceration in neoliberal time’s double bind. It contends that the forced improvisation and feminist reorientation undertaken by the protagonists can be analyzed through the lens of temporality. Finally, it contemplates how the disciplinary-specific modes through which the novels’ protagonists consider temporality might be connected to the specific literary projects of their authors.