1st Edition
Experiencing Political Conflict A Critical-Phenomenological Exploration
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
How to Enter Conflict
Some Preliminaries
The Method: Phenomenology, Critical and Applied
Scope and Limitations
Who Is This Book For?
Reflections on Positionality
Chapter 1: Philosophy of Political Conflict: State of Play
1.1 Conflict Utopianism: Justice and Consensus
Rawls and the Hope for a Realistic Utopia
Rawlsian Limits and the Call for More Realism
1.2 Conflict Realism: Order and Compromise
Horton and the Legitimacy Problem
1.3 Conflict Essentialism: Living Through Conflict
Mouffe and Conflict Fatalism
1.4 The Conspicuous Absence of Political Conflict in Political Philosophy
Conclusion
References
Chapter 2: Critical Phenomenology: What Should It Be (Doing)?
2.1 Classical Phenomenology and Its Transcendental Project
2.2 Critical Phenomenology: A Brief Introduction
2.3 The Status of Critical Phenomenology: Four Readings
The Traditionalist Reading
The Reparative Reading
The Avant-Gardist Reading
The Collaborative Reading
Critical Phenomenologies Avant la Lettre
Collaborative Critical Phenomenology: Traditionalist or Progressive?
Critical Phenomenology: An Oxymoron?
2.4 Critical Phenomenology and Qualitative Research Methods
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: The Plural Normativity of the Political World
3.1 Political Actors on Conflict
3.2 An Existential-Phenomenological Account of Political Conflict
Normative Claims: Pull, Pressure, Call
Me Against You: Me-Claims and Thou-Claims
For Our Sake: We-Claims
Us Against You: Thou-Claims (in the Plural)
He, She, They: Third-Personal Claims (Singular and Plural)
What Makes a Claim Political?
Some Qualifications
Im-personal Claims: Das Man
Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: The Conflict Space
4.1 Political Actors on Conflict Space
The Location of Conflict
The Political Agent and (Choosing the Right) Conflict Space
The Other in Conflict Space
4.2 A Heideggerian Theory of Conflict Space
Projecting Space
Resurfacing Location
The Other as Co-Dweller
Putting Everything Together: Conflict Spatiality
4.3 Asymmetrical Conflict Spaces, Spaces of Violence
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: The Conflict Body
5.1 Coates’s Conflict Event
5.2 Embodying Conflict, Racialized Being-toward-the-World
The Body and Its Schema
The Conflict Body and the Fracturing of Being-toward-the-World
Black and White Being-toward-the-World (and Their Entanglement)
5.3 Political Typification and Corporeal Conflict
Schutz and Typification
Political Conflict Events and Political Representatives
Racialized Typification and Corporeal Conflicts
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Intractable Conflict and the Wild Region of Politics
6.1 Avoiding the Essentialist Reading
Merleau-Ponty: Perceptual Faith and Its Upset
The Flesh and Its Chiasm
The Flesh and Political Conflict
6.2 A Critical-Phenomenological Approach to Political Conflict
A Wild Region of Politics
A/Symmetrical Speaking Situations and the Call to Silence
6.3 In Lieu of a Conclusion: Resisting and Hesitating
References
Index.
Biography
Niclas Rautenberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hamburg, Germany. His published work has appeared in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies and the Journal of the American Philosophical Association.
“We live in times of extreme—sometimes exasperating—political conflict. This book offers a clear, rigorous, and original account of the lived experience of political conflict as an action performed by embodied subjects in spaces that are deeply shaped by asymmetrical power.”
Lisa Guenther, Queen’s University, Canada
“In combining critical phenomenology and qualitative interviews, this is a highly original and engaging work offering critical perspectives of what constitutes the phenomena of political conflict. Grounded in accounts of embodied lived experiences, this book should be essential reading for anyone working in critical phenomenology, political philosophy, and conflict studies.”
Luna Dolezal, University of Exeter, UK
