Feminism, Phenomenology, and Temporality by Kristin Anne Rodier
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University of Alberta Habits of Resistance: Feminism, Phenomenology, and Temporality By Kristin Anne Rodier A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree Doctor of Philosophy in PHILOSOPHY Department of Philosophy ©Kristin Anne Rodier, Fall 2014 Edmonton, Alberta Permission is hereby granted to the University of Alberta Libraries to reproduce single copies of this thesis and to lend or sell such copies for private, scholarly or scientific research purposes only. Where the thesis is converted to, or otherwise made available in digital form, the University of Alberta will advise potential users of the thesis of these terms. The author reserves all other publication and other rights in association with the copyright in the thesis and, except as herein before provided, neither the thesis nor any substantial portion thereof may be printed or otherwise reproduced in any material form whatsoever without the author's prior written permission PREFACE Parts of this thesis are previously published. Small pieces of Chapter Two are published in Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy (“Review of D’Habitude.” Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy 15: 2 [2011]: 237-40). A version of Chapter Three was published in Janus Head (“Touching the Boundary Mark: Aging, Habit, and Temporality in Beauvoir’s La Vieillesse.” Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology, and the Arts 10.1 5-6, [2013]: 37-59). Small pieces of Chapter Four were published in Clothing Cultures (“Clothing the Lived Fat Body.” Clothing Cultures 1.2 [2014]: 171-178). i DEDICATION To my grandparents, for planting seeds and always tending carefully to them. To the women in my family, for showing me how to make things. To my father, for your curiosity and irreverent humour. To my mother, for all the small things you do everyday and for always knowing what to say. (And to you both for your boundless love.) To Aron, for believing in me. (This is for you.) ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Principally I acknowledge my brilliant supervisor, Dr. Cressida Heyes, whose masterful questioning, strategic guidance, and conscientious honesty has made me a better writer, scholar, and teacher. I can only strive to be worthy of my immense fortune to have been her student. I would also like to express my heartfelt appreciation for the multidimensional support and solidarity I have received from Chloë Taylor and Marie-Eve Morin. Michelle Meagher provided invaluable mentoring that opened many new supportive roads for my scholarship. I would like to express my gratitude to Gail Weiss whose enthusiasm for the project sparked a supportive and challenging discussion. I have also received much time and energy from Ada Jaarsma, Samantha Brennan, Anna Mudde, Kate Norlock, Shannon Musset, Talia Welsh, Donald Ipperciel, Robert Burch, and Sarah Hoffman. I have received helpful feedback from various commentators; Jennifer Epp, Karen Robertson, Lisa Pelot, Emily Anne Parker, Janine Jones, Joanne Tourney, and the attendees of many meetings of the Canadian Society for Women in Philosophy, the Society for Existential and Phenomenological Theory and Culture, the Canadian Philosophical Association, and Fat Studies. I was able to present parts of this thesis at conferences because of generous support I received from Cressida Heyes’s grant as the Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Gender and Sexuality. I would like to acknowledge the support I have received from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Alberta, specifically Bruce Hunter, Jennifer Welchman, and Jack Zupko. The Department of Women’s and Gender Studies has provided me with continued support, specifically Lise Gotell, Susanne Luhmann, and Michelle Meagher. I am also grateful for the continued support I have received from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Saskatchewan, specifically Eric Dayton, Leslie Howe, and Emer O’Hagan. My gratitude goes to Diane McKen, Anita Theroux, Wendy Minns, and Sussanne McDonald for their administrative support. I am indebted to Josh St. Pierre and Emily Douglas for their formatting and proofreading expertise. A special thank-you is due to Megan Dean for thinking with me and believing in this project. I am deeply grateful to be a part of an extremely talented cohort: Lucas Crawford, Angela Thachuk, Catherine Clune-Taylor, Emily Douglas, Megan Dean, and Joshua St. Pierre. Many thanks are due to my writing group for making a schedule, sticking to it, and respecting the timer (mostly). My love and appreciation to my many patient friends, especially Erica Moleski, Donita Davies, and Rachelle Rimmer. Thank you to my sister-cousins, Kara Schell and Melissa Crowe, for being at the kitchen table ready to solve problems with me this entire time. Many thanks are due to my partner’s loving family, especially Joanne and Ken Lewis, and Alana and Bob Schilf. I thank with my whole heart Aron Schilf and Grace (little dog, donut, Grancine my Queen) for becoming my family during the writing of this dissertation. Thanking my parents with words is beyond inadequate. They provided for me in every way possible. I share this accomplishment with them. This is written in loving memory and perennial grief for my grandfather, Arnold Kirzinger, who taught me how to take things apart and put them back together. iii ABSTRACT Feminist resistance to gender oppression, while surely a collective political project, has an important individual dimension. Individual resistance most often takes the shape of self- transformation where one works on the self to change desires, attitudes, and practices. I argue that paradigms of self-transformation that rely on willpower or increased self-knowledge for change can responsibilize oppressed persons when changing proves difficult, which frustrates feminist ends. Because of this I argue that habit deserves increased attention from feminists working on personal resistance to gender oppression. I analyse a range of contexts in which habit appears and I underscore its temporal character in order to render intelligible problems in feminist theories of resistance. I work from the assumption that habits have both a negative and a positive quality— they can keep us stuck, but they also provide the ground from which we can change. While habits have been theorized as the reason for a lack of social change, I argue that habit reveals to us that much of how we are constituted is actually our personal control. I argue that paying closer attention to habitual constitution reveals that there are both multiple kinds of habits and also multiple strategies that can change them. At the same time as I argue for increased attention to habit, I build a relationship between lived experiences of temporality and how social forces produce meaningful temporal narratives. In this sense, I engage with our habits of time. I situate this project in contemporary feminist theories and draw on the phenomenological and existential traditions drawing primarily on the works of Simone de Beauvoir, Edmund Husserl, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. My overarching concern is not to say what habit is or what habits we should have, but rather to see what habit does. CONTENTS iv INTRODUCTION: Habits of Resistance ............................................................... 1 Introduction ......................................................................................................... 1 I. Forming Habit .................................................................................................. 3 II. Resisting Habits ............................................................................................ 11 III. Phenomenology and Habit .......................................................................... 18 IV. Habits of Time ............................................................................................ 28 V. Habits of Resistance ..................................................................................... 35 CHAPTER ONE: .................................................................................................. 40 Habits of Reflection: Feminist Autonomy, Intersectionality, and the Epoché ..... 40 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 40 I. Feminist Autonomy ....................................................................................... 46 II. Self-Knowledge, Intersectionality, and Privilege ........................................ 58 III. The Epoché and Habits of Reflection ......................................................... 75 Conclusion ........................................................................................................ 86 CHAPTER TWO: ................................................................................................. 88 Hold a Mirror up to Habit: Feminist Resistance, Ambiguity, and Félix Ravaisson ............................................................................................................................... 88 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 88 I. Ambiguity and Feminist Resistance .............................................................. 93 II. The Woman in the Mirror ............................................................................ 97 III. Changing Habits with