Racist habits

Abstract

This article examines how the phenomenological concept of habit can be productively deployed in the analysis of racism, in order to propose a reframing of the problem. Racism does not unfold primarily in the register of conscious thought or action, I argue, but more intimately and insidiously in the register of bodily habit. This claim, however, relies on a reading of habit as bodily orientation -or habituationas developed by Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception. Drawing on his account, I turn to two salient dimensions of racist praxis which I argue are better understood through the frame of habit: bodily gesture or response, and racialized perception. Building on the analyses of contemporary critical race thinkers, I argue that racism is habitual insofar as it is embedded in bodily modes of responding to the presentation of racialized 'others' and in 'sedimented' modes of racialized seeing. However, this is not to suggest that the acquisition of racist habits is passive, or that such habits foreclose the possibility of change. In the final section, I revisit the concept of habit and its usual characterization as 'sedimentation' or 'calcification'. I argue that while such a reading gives voice to the anchoring weight of the temporal past in habit, a more prospective rendering of the concept is available to us through a rereading of sedimentation as active passivity; habits are not only acquired, they are also held. This in turn will allow us to recast the question of responsibility in relation to one's racist habits.Keywords embodiment, habit, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, phenomenology, racismThe point here is that deep-seated racist emotive responses may form part of the white bodily repertoire, which has become calcified through quotidian modes of bodily transaction in a

Surviving the Survival Narrative Part 1: Internalised Racism and the Limits of Resistance

“…This is indicated by M06's feeling of White-preference/ Asian-aversion in attraction as 'hardwired'. It is here that Ngo's (2016) perspective may help illuminate the difficulty experienced by these participants.…”

“…As elaborated below, these difficulties can take a form of conscious renouncing, whereby an acknowledgement of the desire to relinquish embedded forms of IR is met with what seems like a habitualisation. Ngo's (2016) separation between the cognitive and somatic forms of racist habits can offer a clarity here. Another difficulty lies in participants' inadvertent complicity with the racist structures they are attempting to resist.…”

“…On my reading, Ngo's (2016) theory synthesises the issue of racist sedimentation (i.e. feeling the difficulty of renouncing bodily habituations of racism), along with a recognition of agency on the part of the subject to counteract this feeling that it is 'hardwired'.…”

“…feeling the difficulty of renouncing bodily habituations of racism), along with a recognition of agency on the part of the subject to counteract this feeling that it is 'hardwired'. Ngo (2016) locates agency within the idea of habituated racist somatic (i.e. bodily) responses in an individual, cultivating an understanding that there is 'uptake involved in such racist orientations' (p. 8).…”

Shedding Some (More) Light in Bourdieu's Habitus and Doxa: A Socio‐Phenomenological Approach

“…Rather, we should understand habit in a more inclusive fashion as a general bodily manner of interacting with the world. For instance, the term “racist motor habits” is not referring to a single, repetitive racist behaviour but to a totality of ill‐disposed gestures towards racial others across different circumstances (like locking car doors or holding onto one's handbag when a black person is seen nearby) (Ngo, 2016, p. 853).…”