Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, OthersIn this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer phenomenology, Ahmed contends, reveals how social relations are arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these relations by not following the accepted paths, and how a politics of disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at first glance, seem awry. Ahmed proposes that a queer phenomenology might investigate not only how the concept of orientation is informed by phenomenology but also the orientation of phenomenology itself. Thus she reflects on the significance of the objects that appear—and those that do not—as signs of orientation in classic phenomenological texts such as Husserl’s Ideas. In developing a queer model of orientations, she combines readings of phenomenological texts—by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Fanon—with insights drawn from queer studies, feminist theory, critical race theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Queer Phenomenology points queer theory in bold new directions. |
Contents
Find Your Way | 1 |
Orientations Toward Objects | 25 |
Sexual Orientation | 65 |
The Orient and Other Others | 109 |
Disorientation and Queer Objects | 157 |
NOTES | 181 |
| 203 | |
| 217 | |
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action Ahmed allows already appear arrival background bodily butch and femme butch-femme chapter create critique culture described deviation direction disorientation ego ideal experience extend face familiar family line Fanon fantasy feel feminist follow Freud gather gender genealogy gift given habits hammer happens Heidegger heteronormative heterosexual couple homosexual horizon Husserl inhabit spaces inheritance insofar involves Judith Butler Judith Halberstam lesbian desire lesbian feminists lived Marxism masculinity matter means Merleau-Ponty mixed-race move oblique one's Pakistan perceived perception philosophy politics prime meridian proximity queer effect queer object queer phenomenology queer studies queer theory question race racial reach reachable relation repetition reproduction sense sexual orientation shared side simply skin social spatial specific straight line strange suggests surface take the shape takes shape Teresa de Lauretis things tion turn vertical white bodies women words writing table