Racism: On the phenomenology of embodied desocialization |
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Authors: | Michael Staudigl |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria |
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Abstract: | This paper addresses racism from a phenomenological viewpoint. Its main task is, ultimately, to show that racism as a process
of “negative socialization” does not amount to a contingent deficiency that simply disappears under the conditions of a fully
integrated society. In other words, I suspect that racism does not only indicate a lack of integration, solidarity, responsibility, recognition, etc.; rather, that it is, in its extraordinary negativity, a socially
constitutive phenomenon per se. After suggesting phenomenology’s potential to tackle the question of racism, I will focus on the experiential oppressiveness of racism, i.e., the ways in which it affects its victims’ lived experiences, in transforming their habitual ways of life
and, finally, their subjectivities. My major thesis is that racism works via both inter-kinaesthetically as well as symbolically
inflicted distortions of the victim’s body schema. As such a process of “negative socialization,” racism, however, influences
the embodied self-conception of the oppressor, who finds himself compelled to adhere to some kind of invisible norm such as,
e.g., “whiteness.” |
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Keywords: | |
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