Living Alterities: Race and Critical Phenomenologies

(4 Credits)

To what extent are my embodied habits influenced by racialized ways of seeing and moving? Has the social construction of race sedimented in my body? What critical interventions and reparative strategies might be possible? An analysis of bodily experience as fashioned by structural, political and institutional constructions of race will be explored through a variety of sources in the contemporary tradition of critical phenomenology; this field of inquiry is a practice of reflecting on the structures which give meaning to our lived experience of consciousness. " " Critical phenomenology is a move toward understanding bodily experience in concert with the ways in which institutional power affects our lives. This type of contemporary and critical phenomenological practice does not only attempt to describe experience (how race might influence how one shops in a store, runs through a crowded airport to catch a flight, births a baby, or takes up space in an elevator) but also invites strategies of repair through coalitional labor. These philosophical inquiries will be guided by the work of Charles W. Mills, Alia Al-Saji, George Yancy, Mariana Ortega, Emily Lee, and others. This course satisfies the Critical Race Theory requirement. Critical phenomenology is a move toward understanding bodily experience in concert with the ways in which institutional power affects our lives. This type of contemporary and critical phenomenological practice does not only attempt to describe experience (how race might influence how one shops in a store, runs through a crowded airport to catch a flight, births a baby, or takes up space in an elevator) but also invites strategies of repair through coalitional labor. These philosophical inquiries will be guided by the work of Charles W. Mills, Alia Al-Saji, George Yancy, Mariana Ortega, Emily Lee, and others. This course satisfies the Critical Race Theory requirement.