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Husserl and queer theory

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Abstract

In spite of a history wherein queer theory has openly rejected phenomenology, phenomenology has gained increasing interest amongst queer theorists. However, Husserl’s phenomenology is often marginalized in attempts to integrate queer theory with phenomenology, and when Husserl is addressed specifically, his work is often treated superficially or even misrepresented. Given this, my first goal is to demonstrate how Husserl’s work is already open to positions considered fundamental to queer theory, and that Husserl is often explicitly arguing for these positions himself. In doing so, I wish to show that Husserl’s phenomenology is well fitted for complementary engagement with queer theory. My second goal is to work through some ways in which Husserl’s phenomenology and queer theory can work together in detail to accomplish shared theoretical goals. Although this will not be a full-blown analysis—which would exceed the parameters of this article—my hope is to provide a certain amount of in depth work that can then assist further analyses that combine these methods.

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Notes

  1. My conception of phenomenology is informed primarily by Husserl’s work, and secondarily by that of Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and de Beauvoir. Beginning with experience, the phenomenologist carries out analyses that reveal the structures that underlie it. These structures, depending on the type of phenomenological method employed, might be essential, ontological, psychological, sociological/anthropological and/or existential. But regardless of the direction of the analysis, these structures are, by definition, more enduring than the experience that reveals them, and further, they exist in a different realm—as ideal, as Being, as psychological structures or as intersubjective, gendered , or raced ways of being. So, for my purposes here, phenomenology will be understood as a method that is based upon experience in order to identify and describe the structures that underlie and/or enable said experience.

  2. The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 2nd edition (May 2005).

  3. Foucault et al. (2012, p. 101).

  4. Käll (2015, p. 26).

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid. (pp. 26–27) It is interesting to note that Ahmed refers to this same early article by Butler in her Queer Phenomenology, in order to demonstrate a connection between phenomenology and feminism in Butler’s work: “For Judith Butler, it is precisely how phenomenology exposes the ‘sedimentation’ of history in the repetition of bodily action, that makes it a useful resource for feminism (1997a: 406) What bodies ‘tend to do’ are effects of histories rather than being originary.” (Ahmed 2006, p. 56) However, Ahmed—whose project is to demonstrate those objects that disappear through specific ways that we “orient” ourselves both spatially and theoretically—does not mention the erasure of the connection between phenomenology and feminism, or phenomenology and performativity, in Butler’s later work. In fact, Käll comments after pointing out the disappearance of references to phenomenology in Butler’s Gender Trouble, “[T]he passing over of this influence in Gender Trouble two years later raises some interesting questions about positioning, silencing, establishing of traditions, and claiming of intellectual property rights.” (Käll 2015, p. 27).

  7. Queer theory, like phenomenology, has multiple permutations—possibly many more than we see in phenomenology. Overall, though, queer theory can be described as a critical practice that challenges “normative models of sex, gender, and sexuality” and in doing so, often the notion of identity itself. Such critique has been further applied to notions of history, temporality, political agency, and the integration (and/or undermining) of our various identities such as race, class, ethnicity, nationality, etc. (Hall and Jagose 2013, pp. xvi–xvii) I cannot address all of these themes here. My analyses will be oriented toward those discussions influenced by the works of Foucault and Butler—how their critiques of the normative, sexual body ultimately also destabilize the notion of identity itself.

  8. Ahmed (2006, pp. 21–22).

  9. Salamon (2009, p. 227) Salamon actually refers Eagleton to Ahmed’s text in a parenthetical remark immediately following this citation: “(Sara Ahmed's recent book Queer Phenomenology, for instance, might be a good place for Eagleton to start).”

  10. Ibid.

  11. Salamon (2010, p. 76).

  12. Salamon refers to Rubin’s article in her “Phenomenology” (2014).

  13. Rubin (1998, p. 279).

  14. Fryer (2012, p. 43).

  15. Ibid. (pp. 53–4).

  16. Ibid. (p. xv).

  17. As Salamon states, when addressing the promise of phenomenology as a method for trangender studies, “Even Husserl, for all his abstraction, has been usefully mobilized by Sarah Ahmed (2006) for queer studies, and his concepts of internal and external hoizons show future promise for trans studies.” (Salamon 2014, p. 155) Salamon’s statement demonstrates how Husserl is still considered by most to be too abstract to be applicable to areas such as queer theory and trans studies, except in particular instances. Further, Salamon only cites herself and Ahmed’s work—both addressed in this article—as instances of this kind of methodological combination.

  18. One example of such in depth work is found in H.A. Nethery’s published dissertation, Husserl and Foucault on the Subject: The Companions (2013). While Nethery focuses on a dialogue between Husserl and Foucault, though, I am looking more specifically at Husserl’s contribution to queer theory in general.

  19. Husserl (2001, p. 65).

  20. Ibid. (p. 69). My emphasis.

  21. Husserl (1999, pp. 14–15). Husserl is comparing “adequate” evidence with “apodictic” here. The former is evidence based upon the compiling of experiences, possibly to infinity; the latter is “absolute indubitability,” as seen in universal principles.

  22. Husserl (2001, p. 77).

  23. Husserl (1999, p. 67).

  24. Husserl (1989, p. 124).

  25. Ibid. (p. 86).

  26. Husserl (1989, p. 85).

  27. Husserl’s description is disturbingly parallel to the medical and/or psychological professions’ attitudes about women, homosexuals, transgender persons, persons with disabilities, persons of color, persons of different ethnicities or nationalities, persons in poverty, and more. It could therefore be used as a basis for combined analyses with queer theory, with regard to critical queer assessments of dominant industries on subjectivity through a phenomenological analysis. We will address this more in Part II.

  28. Husserl (1999, p. 92).

  29. Ibid. (p. 136). I thank H.A. Nethery for bringing this citation to my attention.

  30. Husserl (1989, p. 95).

  31. Ibid. (p. 87).

  32. Ibid. (pp. 3–4).

  33. Rubin (1998, p. 264).

  34. Ahmed (2006, p. 29).

  35. Ibid. (p. 36).

  36. Ibid. (p. 54).

  37. Halberstam (1994, p. 210).

  38. Ibid. (p. 212).

  39. Halberstam (1998, p. 147).

  40. Moreland (2013, p. 447).

  41. Husserl (1989, p. 85).

  42. I am not trying to suggest that an Asian, gay, transman is as opposite, or as different as possible from Husserl’s example as we can get—in other words, I’m not trying to say that this example is completely “other” to Husserl’s—rather, I wish to identify an example that has not already been used, either by Husserl or by the queer theorists described in the prior section.

  43. Ahmed (2006, p. 110).

  44. Ibid. (p. 111).

  45. One would be tempted to ask Ahmed how this “interruption” through racism—or from her perspective, the racial structuring of the corporeal schema—is in play in her earlier analysis of touching, where she determined that we touch, and are touched by, the table. How is my sensing of the table as cold, smooth, and hard restructured by racism? Clearly, racism might add a determinate layer upon that experience, so that, for example, the white person might experience a sense of entitlement in this touching experience whereas the black person might not. It seems, though, that the rupture of race, while clearly an essential aspect of the experience, does not erase the sensations of cold, hard, and smooth altogether. It is for this reason that I would argue that maintaining an interplay of phenomenological and queer theories would allow for even more productive analyses of a sensory experience in light of socio-historical conditions.

  46. Foucault (1980, p. 98).

  47. Butler (1990, p. 175).

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Rodemeyer, L.M. Husserl and queer theory. Cont Philos Rev 50, 311–334 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-017-9412-x

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