Contemporary Phenomenologies of Normativity: Norms, Goals, and Values, edited by Sara Heinämaa, Mirja Hartimo, and Ilpo Hirvonen, 2022
In phenomenology, normality is neither an objectively measurable average nor a mere historical or... more In phenomenology, normality is neither an objectively measurable average nor a mere historical or social construct. Rather than being understood from without, looked at from the outside of lived experiences, normality is approached from within as a condition and mode of lived experience. In the first part of the paper, I will show why it is relevant to turn to a phenomenological investigation of normality if one is interested in normativity. This perspective, so I will argue, is needed if one wants to understand not only how external norms actually become part of subjective experience but also how norms develop in the first place through repeated practices. As such, the experience of normality, understood here as consisting of selfevident feelings of orientation and familiarity, can be interpreted as the result of an operative normativity. In the second part, I will present Husserl's theory of normality in more detail in order to demonstrate how it could be applied to a more systematic investigation of normality and norms on different genetic levels. Lived normality is seen here as a dynamic and fragile system of balances; a constant attempt to achieve an equilibrium with one's environment and fellow subjects. (Re)turning to normality allows us to see normativity at work, embedded in the need for constant development, appropriation, and transformations of regular structures in experience.
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Papers by Maren Wehrle
In a second step, a graded phenomenological model of habits will be introduced, ranging from passive sense reception to bodily praxis and skills, up to personal beliefs and convictions. It will ascend from passive and implicit to active and explicit stages. This model will in turn be related to different forms of emotion regulation, likewise, ascending from more implicit (and passive,) up to explicit (and active,) strategies to manipulate or control one’s emotions. In doing so, the chapter will argue that although emotion and habit are part of the same embodied-affective cycle, and cannot fully be separated in the concrete, one can descriptively distinguish their respective roles and functions. Taking the habitual aspects of emotion regulation into account, in the closing section, the chapter will discuss to what extent we are able to change the ways we (usually) feel, or if this is even something we should aim at.
ents itself as a timeless and self-evident truth, it grows out of a contingent and frag
ile state, where norms have not yet been established. This dynamic state is a precondition of established social norms, so this paper argues, and can be phenom
enologically described as intersubjective normality. Lived intersubjective normality is understood as an interactive and ongoing process of making and (un-)making of normality, which is characterized by an experienced friction between different ‘normalities.’
In a first step, the paper describes the genetic dimension of lived normality, that is, how something becomes normal on an individual level. In a second step, the paper analyses how normality is made and unmade intersubjectively. It thereby dis
tinguishes between a social and an intersubjective normality. Whereas social nor
mality situates and shapes every individual experience, intersubjective normality refers to the actual encounter between subjects. Such a space between is a source of normative friction, but also the place where one can stop clinging to old fictions, and begin to perceive the world and others anew, do things differently, and tell better stories.
We distinguish four levels in which norms can enter technology: design, materiality, function, and usage. Together, although each in its own way, these levels condition, guide, structure, and shape subjective embodiment by affording or even prescribing specific forms of regular or normative (for example, gendered) behavior.
The 4N (normativities) approach to technology that we introduce in this paper is based on the following assumptions. All technologies, analog as well as digital, depend on a basic materiality or material context (necessary condition). They are realized or appear concretely in a specific design relative to time and culture (practical or situated condition). And they are developed or assigned with a specific function or functionality (sufficient condition). These assumptions or conditions, together with the assumption that technologies exist to be used, and can be changed via usage, provide our four levels of analysis. The level of usage, therefore, has a special status, since it depends on, and can only be investigated in relation to, the other three levels, which in turn specify the normative relationship between user and technology. Even if these levels are hard to differentiate in practice – for example there is no pure materiality without a concrete design, nor pure functionality without some sort of (material) implementation – we still think it is useful to differentiate these levels in theory.
We will develop and illustrate these levels more closely in the third section of this chapter, after we have set the stage with a reflection on the
methodology and division of tasks between (feminist or critical) phenomenology and STS or feminist technoscience studies and have made the case for a combined approach in the second section. In the fourth section, we provide an example of such an approach, considering the normative impact of specific technologies, like pacemakers and fitness trackers, on the bodies of women. We draw on STS to show how these women are affected and determined by technological design and materiality, and we draw on phenomenology to show how these technologies are lived and where we might find forms of subjective and collective agency and resistance.
In this regard, we argue that phenomenology is most useful in investigating the interrelations of design and usage from the perspective of the bodily subject who experiences and lives with, and through, technology. STS and feminist technoscience in turn, have the expertise and tools to investigate the historicity and change of the design and its underlying materiality and material context, that is, how bodily subjects are differently embedded, conditioned, and represented by respective technologies. Another relevant line of research, which we can only mention here and for which other disciplines like engineering or information technology studies must be included, could focus on the success or failure of functionality and how it in turn enables or limits behavior or the possibility to critically reflect, resist, or change the design and usage of technologies.
In this chapter, I will present Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy as a responsive ethics, in which freedom and vulnerability, mind and body, we and others, are necessarily intertwined. Her entire work, so I would like to argue, not merely her "ethics of ambiguity", can be characterized as an attempt to develop such a performative ethics - an ethics that argues for the response-ability to accept and embrace one's ambiguity to live an "authentic," that is, ethical life.
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In this way, the following analysis is inspired by Judith Butler’s theory of performativity. While Butler is well-known for her analysis of the discursive, I will probe the phenomenological potential of performativity by applying the analy-sis to the human body. Butler’s theory of gender performativity opens up the picture of social norms as a two-way street – not only do norms effect our language and discursive behaviors, but language must also enact (take up or appropriate) norms in order for them to be effective. This applies, as I will argue, also in the case of the human body. As material and lived bodies, we are situated in a historically and culturally- informed world, wherein norms manifest as well-ordered and typified social practices according to which we live. Yet, at the same time, we are practical agents insofar as we must bodily enact certain norms for them to be effective.
The aim of the proposed paper is to bridge the gap between the biological and social approaches to ageing and gender with a phenomenological-anthropological approach. In this respect, I want to argue that the biological and the social are intertwined in human embodiment. The paper thus addresses ageing and gender neither as purely biological nor as merely discursive phenomena, but as phenomena of an embodied experience. Experience in this sense is necessarily situated, constituted by biological, material, historical and socio-cultural circumstances. As situated bodily beings, we not only have a first, but also a second nature: social norms are incorporated in the ways we habitually relate to the world, ourselves and others. While the process of ageing always confronts us with the finitude and materiality of our bodily being in general, with respect to gender and ageing, this means, as situated, specific circumstances and norms influence not only the way we think about ageing, but also the processes of becoming older and the experience of our aged bodies.
– and that these are, in turn, characterized by different temporalities. Anthropologically, I want to argue that having a body – what occurs as an inherent break to human embodiment–is the presupposition for the experience of a stable and object-like time. I will conclude that the double aspect of human embodiment and in particular the thematic experience of having a body enables both the experience of a past, which is remembered, and a future that is planned.