The normal, the natural, and the normative: A Merleau-Pontian legacy to feminist theory, critical race theory, and disability studies

Weiss, Gail

doi:10.1007/s11007-014-9316-y

Cited by 62 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…It is this type of practical bodily work that forms the heart of Young's phenomenology of female embodiment: her analysis departs from her observations regarding ''bodily comportment, physical engagement with things, ways of using the body in performing tasks'' in the context of everyday existence (2005: 144). This approach is novel exactly because it approaches the body as it is done in daily life (Weiss 2015). Following Young, we, too, highlight the mundane, continuing bodily work involved in respondents' efforts to make their dys-appearing face disappear.…”

Section: Facing a Disruptive Facementioning

confidence: 96%

“…The role of embodiment and materiality in co-shaping disability experiences is increasingly taken up in disability scholarship, signaling a move beyond the so-called social model of disability that focuses on the way the organization of society, rather than the impairment itself, effectively disables individuals. As Garland-Thomson has recently argued, for instance, disability cannot be reduced to either the body's physical make-up or an environment that fails to accommodate difference Weiss 2015). Instead, Garland-Thomson conceptualizes disability as a misfit between the body and its material context.…”

Section: Facing a Disruptive Facementioning

confidence: 99%

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Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

et al. 2017

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In recent years, facial difference is increasingly on the public and academic agenda. This is evidenced by the growing public presence of individuals with an atypical face, and the simultaneous emergence of research investigating the issues associated with facial variance. The scholarship on facial difference approaches this topic either through a medical and rehabilitation perspective, or a psycho-social one. However, having a different face also encompasses an embodied dimension. In this paper, we explore this embodied dimension by interpreting the stories of individuals with facial limb absence against the background of phenomenological theories of the body, illness and disability. Our findings suggest that the atypical face disrupts these individuals' engagement with everyday projectsThe term ''disfigurement'' may carry derogative associations which serve to stigmatize those who have an atypical (facial) appearance. In order to prevent such associations in this article, we mostly opt for neutral, descriptive terms such as ''visible (facial) difference,'' ''atypical face,'' ''facial limb absence/ loss,'' or ''amputated (facial) area'' when referring to the condition and looks of the participants in our study (see for guidelines on non-offensive language as formulated by UK-based charity organization Changing Faces: https://www.changingfaces.org.uk/about-us/press-media/media-guidelines). When we cannot avoid the term ''disfigurement,'' we use quotation marks to denote its problematic nature. when it gives rise to disruptive perceptions, sensations, and observations. The face then ceases to be the absent background to perception, and becomes foregrounded in awareness. The disruptions evoked by facial difference call for adjustments: as they come to terms with their altered face, the participants in our study gradually develop various new bodily habits that re-establish their face's absence, or relate to its disruptive presence. It is through these emergent habits that facial difference comes to be embodied. By analyzing the everyday experiences of individuals with facial limb absence, this article provides a much-needed exploration of the embodied aspects of facial difference. It also exemplifies how a phenomenological account of illness and disability can do justice both to the impairments and appearance issues associated with atypical embodiment.

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Section: Facing a Disruptive Facementioning

confidence: 96%

Section: Facing a Disruptive Facementioning

confidence: 99%

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

et al. 2017

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“…Garland-Thomson (2017), describes this dominate representation as the normate, "the social figure through which people can represent themselves as definitive human beings" (p. 8). Power in terms of authority and status is attributed to anyone who fits such bodily configuration (Weiss, 2015;Weissman, 1992).…”

Section: Contested Bodies In Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

Contested Interiority: Sense of Outsideness/Insideness Conveyed through Everyday Interactions with University Campus Doors

Stafford

2019

Intry

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Our sense of place in the world is mediated through our everyday interactions with both people and space (Seamon, 1985). Everydayness is one of the most profound levels and shapers of human experience, yet too often this level of relation is overlooked and taken for granted in the design of environments (Dyck, 2005; Tuan, 1977). In this article, I present a first-person phenomenological account of my everyday interactions with doors on a university campus to uncover contested notions of interiority. My body-space routines reveal how a sense of outsideness/insideness is controlled through my interactions with objects such as doors, door handles and thresholds. These accounts suggest that given our everyday activities are intrinsically linked to designed environments (Upton, 2002) and that interiority is relational (Atmodiwirjo & Yatmo, 2018), adopting an everydayness frame from diverse users’ perspectives is imperative to improve human experiences and spatial justice within design practice. This is critically important for non-normative bodies like mine whose subjective experience of interiority is constantly being disputed and denied by hostile materiality.

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“…Yet, if interrupted by an event that destroys the experience of easy movement and spatial interplay, the attention of the moving subject is set to change. Weiss (2015) draws on Merleau-Ponty, Iris Young and Judith Butler in identifying movements as meaningful whether they are reflected upon or not. Actions are related to an "I can" rather to an "I think that"; as such, movements constitute an intentionality that is prior to thought.…”

Section: Spatiality: a Phenomenological Perspective On Spacementioning

confidence: 99%

“I Guess that the Greatest Freedom … ”: A Phenomenology of Spaces and Severe Multiple Disabilities

Evensen

Standal

2017

Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology

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The normal, the natural, and the normative: A Merleau-Pontian legacy to feminist theory, critical race theory, and disability studies

Cited by 62 publications

References 2 publications

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

Facing a Disruptive Face: Embodiment in the Everyday Experiences of “Disfigured” Individuals

Contested Interiority: Sense of Outsideness/Insideness Conveyed through Everyday Interactions with University Campus Doors

“I Guess that the Greatest Freedom … ”: A Phenomenology of Spaces and Severe Multiple Disabilities

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