In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer
studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the
“orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient”
in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be
situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through
the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and
others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where
one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations
affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached. A queer
phenomenology, Ahmed contends, reveals how social relations are
arranged spatially, how queerness disrupts and reorders these
relations by not following the accepted paths, and how a politics of
disorientation puts other objects within reach, those that might, at
first glance, seem awry.
Ahmed proposes that
a queer phenomenology might investigate not only how the concept of
orientation is informed by phenomenology but also the orientation of
phenomenology itself. Thus she reflects on the significance of the
objects that appear—and those that do not—as signs of orientation
in classic phenomenological texts such as Husserl’s Ideas. In
developing a queer model of orientations, she combines readings of
phenomenological texts—by Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and
Fanon—with insights drawn from queer studies, feminist theory,
critical race theory, Marxism, and psychoanalysis. Queer
Phenomenology points queer theory in bold new directions.