You have full access to this open access chapter. Research on the experience of gendered embodiment, on the one hand, and racialized embodiment, on the other hand, has emerged as an important tradition in phenomenology thanks to the works of Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex and Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks respectively.
And those inspired by Fanonโfor example, George Yancy and Alia Al-Sajiโhave homed in on the experiences of persons of color confronted by the white gaze or entering white spaces. While each of these lineages has contributed to expanding the discipline of phenomenology, specific descriptions of the bodily experiences of women of color have received comparatively little attention in this field. This chapter aims to fill this gap by exploring the bodily experiences of women of color, thereby making a case for expanding phenomenological work at the intersection of gender and race.
You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF. I discuss three phenomena that speak to the need for intersectional phenomenologies: body image, the gaze, and embodied resistance.
These topics have received considerable attention in critical phenomenological works, either from feminist or critical race perspectives. Yet, treatments of these topics have not considered particularities about the experiences of many women of color. This focus, however, is not necessarily relevant to all women. As I will show, they do not speak to the experiences of many African American women. Second, both discussions of the male gaze and the racializing gaze have identified its alienating and objectifying character; furthermore, the literature in the philosophy of race focuses on the typically hateful character of the racializing gaze.
Yet fewer analyses have considered how women of color are confronted by this gaze. I argue that in certain instancesโmost notably, with male partners in the context of interracial heterosexual relationshipsโthey are objectified in a way that exoticizes and overly sexualizes them. Third, I explore how embodied forms of resistance to oppression may take shape for women of different races.
