Delia Popa, “The Other Within: Elements of a Feminist Theory of the Stranger“
In the fifth Cartesian Meditation, Edmund Husserl approaches the problem of the other in terms of an indirect intentionality grounded in a pairing (Paarung), which he describes as a passive synthesis of association. While Husserl makes it clear that the other is not just another version of myself, and therefore should not be assimilated nor identified to the sphere of the one’s ego, its otherness remains difficult to capture with the instruments of static phenomenology, requiring a genetic method. However, the passive synthesis of association revealed by Husserl’s genetic phenomenology as grounding my relationship to the other seems to circumscribe it in such a way that our co-presence in the same world is deprived of interaction, surprise or conflict.
In my talk, I will revisit Emmanuel Lévinas’, Jean-Paul Sartre’s and Michel Henry’s interpretations of Husserl’s theory of intersubjectivity, as well as Anthony Steinbock’s project of a generative phenomenology, with the goal of reflecting on the possibility of a feminist phenomenology of the other. What happens if the other is a woman and what does it mean for a woman to feel like a stranger in this world? Given the fact that women often take in charge the material organization of the household, shaping the broader relationship to the environment and to the lifeworld, how should their otherness be understood? Is the feminine a mere component of the Husserlian pairing, passively associated to a generic consciousness that is neutral, or should it be rather considered as part of an asymmetric relation that is largely responsible for the power dynamics of our social world?