Being at Home: A Feminist Phenomenology of Disorientation in Illness

Abstract

This article explores the relation among illness, home, and belonging. Through a feminist phenomenological framework, I describe the disorientations of being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and living with mental illness. This research anticipates the consequences of illness and serious (bodily) disorientations for a conception of belonging as seamless body–world compatibility. Instead, this article examines how the (in)stability of bodily dwellings in experiences of disorientation can suggest ways of being in the world that are more attentive to interdependency, unpredictability, and change in human experience. I argue that these types of dwellings function as a more capacious and apposite metaphor to account for variations in belonging. This discussion outlines the ethical importance of building worlds that make room for different ways of being at home in and through our interactions with others. Although my discussion does not supply norms for ethical action, I contend that a feminist phenomenology of illness generates saliences and illuminates sensibilities that can transform our ways of being with others.

The collective disorientation of the COVID-19 crisis

“…The plurality of the forms of disorientation does not end there: researchers also talk of temporal disorientation (e.g. in Alzheimer's disease; Giannakopoulos et al, 2000), disorientation in web navigation (Ahuja and Webster, 2001), the disorientation of illness (Lajoie, 2019) and of disability (Parrey, 2020), or disorientation in the midst of cognitive inquiry (Earnshaw, 2019).…”

Lost in pandemic time: a phenomenological analysis of temporal disorientation during the Covid-19 crisis

“…The recognition that there are non-spatial forms of disorientation certainly preceded the Covid-19 crisis. Researchers coming from a broad variety of fields had previously investigated social disorientation (Papadopoulos, 2002 ; Bissell & Gorman-Murray, 2019 ), cultural disorientation (Potosky, 2016 ), political disorientation (Tonello, 2018 ), temporal disorientation (Giannakopoulos et al, 2000 ), and the disorientation of illness (Lajoie, 2019 ) disability (Parrey, 2020 ) or cognitive inquiry (Earnshaw, 2019 ).…”

The Problems of Access: A Crip Rejoinder via the Phenomenology of Spatial Belonging

“…In previous work, I described belonging phenomenologically as the bodily cued experience of being at grips with the world and of sharing it with others (Lajoie 2019). The experience of belonging is characteristically varied; it cannot be described monolithically, because belonging is ongoingly negotiated in temporally extended lived situations and interpersonal dynamics.…”

“…This is neither possible nor desirable. I have argued elsewhere that a blanket notion of belonging as seamless body-world complicity simply does not function as an apposite metaphor for a life in which serious disorientations are possible (Lajoie 2019). Descriptions of ‘inconspicuous, unobtrusive, and nonobstinate’ (Diedrich 2001: 212) embodiment fall short; they do not offer an accurate account of the complex ways in which bodies inhabit the world.…”