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Phenomenology and difference: the body, architecture and race
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Weate, Jeremy (1998) Phenomenology and difference: the body, architecture and race. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.
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Official URL: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1362727~S9
Abstract
The aim of the thesis is to consider the position of phenomenology in contemporary thought in order to argue that only on its terms can a political ontology of difference be thought. To inaugurate this project I being by questioning Heidegger's relation to phenomenology. I take issue with the way that Heidegger privileges time over space in "Being and Time". In this way, the task of the thesis is clarified as the need to elaborate a spatio-temporal phenomenology. After re-situating Heidegger's failure in this respect within a Kantian background, I suggest that the phenomenological grounding of difference must work through the body. I contend that the body is the ontological site of both the subject and the object. I use Whitehead and Merleau-Ponty to explore the ramifications of this thesis. I suggest first of all that architecture should be grounded ontologically in the body, and as such avoids being a 'master discourse'. Secondly, by theorising the body and world as reciprocally transformative, my reading of Merleau-Ponty emphasises the ways in which his thinking opens up a phenomenology of embodied difference.
It is on the basis of these themes that I develop this thinking in the direction of race, exploring the dialectics of visibility and invisibility in the work of Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin. I argue that embodied difference attests to variations in the agent's freedom to act in the world. If freedom is understood through Merleau-Ponty as being the embodied ground of historicity, we must ask after unfreedom. I suggest that the "flesh" ontology of a pre-thetic community should be rethought as a regulative ideal, the ideal of a justice that can never be given. In this light, phenomenology becomes as much as poetics. Beyond being though of as conservative, phenomenology henceforth unleashes the possibility of thinking a transformative embodied agency.
Item Type: | Thesis (PhD) | ||||
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Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BD Speculative Philosophy | ||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Heidegger, Martin, 1889-1976, Whitehead, Alfred North, 1861-1947, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 1908-1961, Phenomenology, Philosophy, Modern -- 20th century, Ontology | ||||
Official Date: | June 1998 | ||||
Dates: |
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Institution: | University of Warwick | ||||
Theses Department: | Department of Philosophy | ||||
Thesis Type: | PhD | ||||
Publication Status: | Unpublished | ||||
Supervisor(s)/Advisor: | Benjamin, Andrew E. | ||||
Sponsors: | British Academy (BA) | ||||
Format of File: | |||||
Extent: | 350 leaves | ||||
Language: | eng |
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