PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE Cover Image

PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE
PHENOMENOLOGICAL VARIATION AND INTERCULTURAL TRANSFORMATION: MERLEAU-PONTY’S PHENOMENOLOGY AND ABU-LUGHOD’S ETHNOGRAPHY IN DIALOGUE

Author(s): Laura McMahon
Subject(s): Political Philosophy, Social Philosophy, Existentialism, Structuralism and Post-Structuralism, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Studies in violence and power, Phenomenology, Globalization
Published by: Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai
Keywords: Maurice Merleau-Ponty; Lila Abu-Lughod; critical phenomenology; feminist anthropology; multiculturalism;

Summary/Abstract: This paper develops phenomenological resources for understanding the nature of intercultural understanding, drawing on the work of Merleau-Ponty in dialogue with feminist anthropologist Abu-Lughod. Part One criticizes Western framings of non-Western violence against women that render the experience of non-Western Others inaccessible. Part Two discusses how certain strains in Western feminism reinforce some of these problematic framings. Part Three offers a phenomenological account of our experience of other persons, and Part Four argues that intercultural understanding takes the form of a “variation” between one’s own and the other’s experience. Part Five explores the implications of this phenomenology of cross-cultural understanding for interpreting dynamic cultural transformations, and the politics of violence against women, in an interconnected and unequal world.

  • Issue Year: 66/2021
  • Issue No: 1
  • Page Range: 67-98
  • Page Count: 32
  • Language: English
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