Stony Brook University

SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... The Habits of Racism: A Phenomenology of the Lived Experience of Racism and Racialised Embodiment. A Dissertation Presented by Helen Ngo to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University May 2015 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Helen Ngo We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Anne O'Byrne – Dissertation Co-Advisor Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Edward S. Casey – Dissertation Co-Advisor Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Eduardo Mendieta – Chairperson of Defense Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy Alia Al-Saji – External Reader Associate Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy (McGill University) George Yancy – External Reader Professor of Philosophy, Department of Philosophy (Duquesne University) This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School Charles Taber Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation The Habits of Racism: A Phenomenology of the Lived Experience of Racism and Racialised Embodiment. by Helen Ngo Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy Stony Brook University 2015 This dissertation examines some of the complex questions raised by the phenomenon and experience of racism. My inquiry is twofold: First, drawing on the resources of Merleau-Ponty, I argue that the conceptual reworking of habit as bodily orientation helps us to identify the more subtle but fundamental workings of racism, to catch its insidious, gestural expressions, as well as its habitual modes of racialised perception. Racism, on this account, is equally expressed through bodily habits, and this in turn raises important ethical questions regarding the responsibility for one's racist habits; as its etymology suggests, habits are not merely passive sedimentations, but are actively held in the body. Second, I consider what the lived experience of racism and racialisation teaches us about the nature of our embodied and socially-situated being. I argue that racialised embodiment problematises and extends existing accounts of general embodied experience, calling into question dominant paradigms of the “self” in philosophy, as coherent, fluid, and synchronous. Drawing on thinkers such as Fanon, I argue that the racialised body is “in front of itself” and “uncanny” (in the Heideggerian senses of “strange” and “not-at-home”), while exploring the phenomenological and existential implications of this disorientation and displacement. Finally, I return to the visual register to take up the question of “objectification” in racism and racialisation. While I critically examine the subject-object ontology presupposed by Sartre's account of “the gaze” (le regard), recalling that all embodied being is always already relational and co-constituting, drawing on Merleau-Ponty's concept of the intertwining I argue that racialised embodiment reveals to us the ontological violence of racism – not a merely violation of one's subjectivity as commonly claimed, but also a violation of one's intersubjectivity. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgments v Introduction 1 Ch 1 // Racist Habits: Bodily Gesture, Perception, and Orientation Habit and the Habitual Body 10 Can Habits be Social? 21 Racism in Habitual Bodily Gesture and Perception 28 Bodily Habits and Responsibility 60 Ch 2 // The Lived Experience of Racism and Racialisation The Bodily Experience of Racism and Racialisation 69 The Bodily Experience of Whiteness 100 Ch 3 // Unheimlichkeit: The Racialised Body not-at-Home Unheimlichkeit and the Racialised Body 111 The Porosity of Home, the Porosity of Bodies 135 Do We Need the Home? 149 Ch 4 // Racism's Gaze: Racialised Embodiment between Sartre's Being-Object and Merleau-Ponty's Intertwining Sartre and the Racialised Gaze 162 Critiques and Limitations of the Sartrean Gaze-Object Ontology 173 Merleau-Ponty's Intertwining and the Subject-Object Dissolution 185 Coda – The Ontological Violence of Racism 202 Conclusion 205 Bibliography 209 iv Acknowledgments I have had the great fortune and privilege to work with two wonderful co-advisors. Anne O'Byrne has, from the project's inception, provided me with valuable guidance, while engaging in my work with her customary careful reading and thoughtful response. Edward Casey, my first teacher of phenomenology, has been generous with his encouragement and expertise, and I have benefited immensely from his deep engagement. I thank Anne and Ed for their generosity of time, attention, and for the example they lead as elegant thinkers and patient mentors. I also thank the readers in my committee: Eduardo Mendieta, who has always shown great enthusiasm and support for this project; and my external readers Alia Al-Saji and George Yancy, whose own work make it possible for me to formulate the kinds of questions I do in this dissertation. I thank Brian Irwin and Amir Jaima, whose joyful friendship and intellectual companionship make them exemplary “philosofriends”. My thanks also to friends and colleagues who have offered valuable encouragement along the way: Eunah Lee, Lori Gallegos de Castillo, Tim Johnston, Daniel Susser, Jane Jones, Robert Ramos, Riza Dervişoğlu, Nathalie Batraville, Gustavo Gómez Perez, and Hugues Dusausoit. Finally, I extend my deepest thanks to my family: to mum, dad, Cathy, and Steven, whose love and support kept me going. And most of all to Patrick, who saw all my struggles and setbacks, but never once doubted I would get there in the end; thank you. v – INTRODUCTION – When I was young – I don't know how young exactly, but around 8 or 9 years old – I remember having a distinctive conversation with my older sister, to whom I looked up immensely. We were talking about the jade bracelet around her wrist; a nice enough looking red Chinese jade bracelet, similar to the one my mum and her generation of friends wore. I neither particularly liked nor disliked these bracelets, but even back then they were to my mind, associated with the cumbersome and often painful experience of removal; a simple, circular, hard-stone bangle designed to fit the narrowness of a wrist, its removal would usually involve wringing it over the width of your hand with the help of soapy water and a fair amount of force. For this reason one wore the bracelet either as a semi-permanent appendage, or suffered the sore and reddened hand upon its removal. Given that, along with its weightiness, and obtrusive clunk when inadvertently struck against a table or wall, I wondered why my sister bothered with it. “I wear it to remind myself that I'm Asian,” she, then aged 12 or 13, said. “When I look down at my wrist and see the jade bracelet, I remember that I'm not white.” How funny, I remember thinking to myself. Of course she's Asian, why would she need reminding? And yet, at the same time, there was something in her response that I understood immediately and intuitively. I, too, would sometimes “forget” I was Asian, even growing up as we did, in a migrant suburb among other Chinese-Vietnamese refugee families. Sometimes, I thought with a small pang of guilt, it was 1 nicer to “forget”. When I think of that conversation now, I am struck by the deep and even bittersweet insight of two young girls navigating the complex world of race, alterity, and identity. The quiet hegemony of whiteness, the tension in experiencing oneself from the “inside” as invisible but from the “outside” as visibly “raced”, and the sense of “burden” that this duality brought with it (much like the clunkiness of the jade bracelet itself) – all these were, naturally, not articulated or even formulated in our exchange, but silently evoked. This dissertation is an effort to philosophically address some of the complex questions raised by the phenomenon and experience of racism, presented both in this vignette, and in the testimonies of other “racialised bodies”. I am, in particular, interested in the lived and experiential dimension of racism and racialisation, and for this reason, draw on the philosophical tradition of phenomenology, and specifically, of phenomenological embodiment. My inquiry is guided by two main questions: First, how do phenomenological analyses help us to identify new registers or modes of racist praxis? Here I draw on the resources of French phenomenologist Maurice Merleau-Ponty, arguing that his conception of the habitual body opens up a way into some of the more subtle and basic workings of racism. Second, I ask: what is the bodily experience of racism and racialisation, and what does it tell us about the nature of our embodied – and concomitantly socially-situated – being? In other words, how does racialised embodiment problematise and extend existing accounts of embodied experience more generally? Here I draw on the analyses of critical race thinkers such as Frantz Fanon to call into question some of the dominant paradigms in philosophical and phenomenological conceptions of the self. In pursuing these two lines of inquiry, I hope to demonstrate how phenomenology and critical race theory can come together in a mutually instructive way, each enriching while also challenging the limits of the other. 2 Chapter 1 begins in a constructive spirit. I take up Merleau-Ponty's thought in the Phenomenology of Perception, and in particular, his conceptual reworking of habit and the habitual body. I argue that following his account, we can begin to see how racism entails a set of practices that are embedded in bodily and habitual registers. Recast in terms of orientation and movement, his concept of habit allows us to catch the insidious, gestural expressions of racism – for example, the clutching of one's handbag upon the approach of a Black man.

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