Critical Phenomenology of Illness: Towards a Politics of Care
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Date
2024-08-07
Authors
McLay , Sarah
Journal Title
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Publisher
University of Oregon
Abstract
Working at the intersection of phenomenology and critical disability studies, this dissertation develops a critical phenomenology of illness and health. Moving beyond classical phenomenologies of illness—which center on the first-person experience of a consciousness abstracted from social and historical structures—I argue that responsibly examining illness (and health) demands concretely attending to the ways that particular illness experiences are instituted from within a socio-historical field. Importantly, beyond describing the lived experience of illness, critical phenomenology must track the material-historical structures and norms that foreclose possibilities for coping and living with illness. This involves reckoning with how oppressive structures—in disproportionate ways—debilitate bodies and make them sick. When we do this work, it becomes clear that we must broaden the scope of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1964) call for “an ontological rehabilitation of the sensible” (167). That is, given that phenomenology can’t extract itself from the natural attitude, and given that natural attitudes are implicitly shaped by debilitating structures of oppression, if phenomenology demands rehabilitation, then rehabilitation can’t just take place at the theoretical level. Instead, a radically responsible phenomenology of health/illness demands that we work towards dismantling debilitating systems, and creating a world where all bodies might flourish.