From a casual reader's point of view, the first chapter was fascinating. Looking at a spatial set up often taken for granted, even if the decor may differ from room to room, and applying it to the language of sexual identity was mind blowing. But as the book progressed and the same room and the same table and chair were reevaluated over and over, I began to want something more. I wanted analysis of different rooms, or different interpretations of what a dining room space is or even just a table and chair. I wanted some examples of queer space (if there is such a thing) or be challenged into imagining such a thing. Rarely does philosophical writing successfully manage to make its reader embrace the abstraction that comes along with such writing and bridge this abstraction with everyday, lived experience. Sara Ahmed’s Queer Phenomenology astoundingly does both. . . . Queer Phenomenology impressively emerges as a text that is reachable to its readers.” — Yetta Howard, Women's Studies Moreland, Iain. 2013. What can queer theory do for intersex? In The Routledge queer studies reader, ed. Donald E. Hall, and Annamarie Jagose, 445–463. London and New York: Routledge. Akrich, M. (1992). The description of technical objects. In W. E. Bijker & J. Law (Eds.), Shaping technology/building society (pp. 205–224). MIT Press.

Pollio, A., & Cirolia, L. R. (2022). Fintech urbanism in the startup capital of Africa. Journal of Cultural Economy, 15(4), 508–523. The cover image of Queer Phenomenology explains quite succinctly what the book is about. Phenomenology is the study of structures and space from first person point of view. It is related to other studies such as ontology and epistemology. So it's the why is this space the way it is and how does it affect me or more generally people in the space. There is a lot to this book that I haven't touched on and makes it worth reading. She explores some of the common metaphors and figures of speech employed in English around orientation that I found illuminating, and there are a lot of ideas big and small that she tosses out along the way. One of the most interesting things about the book is how many connections I saw with Chinese philosophy. Much of what she had to say about phenomenology is already contained in concepts like dao, a guiding path or discourse, and she even says at one point: Scott, L. (2017). Disrupting Johannesburg Pride: Gender, race, and class in the LGBTI movement in South Africa. Agenda, 31(1), 42–49. I've read a lot of phenomenology, while still feeling like a neophyte on the subject. I've read some of Heidegger's work, some Bernard Stiegler, some of the object-oriented ontology folk. Essentially, phenomenology is the study of what we perceive around us, as opposed to ontology, the study of our being (there's a lot of overlap). The problem with a lot of approaches to phenomenology, in my opinion, is that they ignore subjectivity in favour of exploring a universal approach to what it means to be human and perceive things. From the ground up (or maybe the table up), Ahmed centers her work around the notion of orientation, how our sense of phenomenology is never this abstract, objective thing but shaped by our past bodily experiences.

In this Book

Finally, a theorist who takes sexual ‘orientation’ at its word. In this moving meditation on directionality, Sara Ahmed takes phenomenology for a turn through queer theory, postcolonial studies, feminism, critical race theory, geometry, and labor politics. In the world Ahmed encourages us to reinhabit, as bodies come to matter, bodily action materializes space, children inherit proximities rather than attributes, privileged bodies sink into familiarity, and politics is at its best when it involves a measure of disorientation. Follow her ‘lines’ of reasoning and you’ll never again reach for an explanation, a book, or a lover without wondering how your grasp extended so far in the first place.” — Kath Weston, author of Gender in Real Time: Power and Transience in a Visual Age Foucault, Michel. 1980. The history of sexuality. Volume I: An introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books/Random House. It's confession time. I like to read books on theory, philosophy and semantics for fun. One of my recent fun reads (and taken off my lengthy wishlist) was Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed. Since I read this book for fun over a three day weekend, this will be an informal post only and not anything meant to be construed as academic. Salamon, Gayle. 2009. Justification and queer method, or leaving philosophy. Hypatia 24 (1): 225–230. (Oppression and Moral Agency: Essays in Honor of Claudia Card). Macharia, K. (2016). 5 Reflections on Trans* & Taxonomy (with Neo Musangi). Critical Arts, 30(4), 495–506. https://doi.org/10.1080/02560046.2016.1232773

If the book has any faults, it's that the first chapter felt a little unfocused, especially compared to the latter chapters. Perhaps that's deliberate; it would make sense that a study of orientation would mean first letting yourself get a little lost. Or maybe it's something that will become clearer on re-reading, when I re-orient myself to her text. I'm going to say up front that what follows is my interpretation of Sara Ahmed's book, as it stands now. This a book that rewards multiple readings and I feel already that my understanding is going to change and grow as I return to it; as far as I'm considered, that openness to re-reading is the pinnacle of what a good philosophical discussion should strive for, and she nails it. Husserl, Edmund. 1989. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, second book. ( Ideas II) Trans. R. Rojcewicz and A. Schuwer. Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

At the library

Husserl, Edmund. 1982. Ideas pertaining to a pure phenomenology and to a phenomenological philosophy, first book: General introduction to a pure phenomenology. ( Ideas I) Trans. F. Kersten. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Bhagat, A. (2018). Forced (queer) migration and everyday violence: The geographies of life, death, and access in Cape Town. Geoforum, 89, 155–163.

As such, the book is divided into three parts: the first part is a general discussion of orientation and phenomenology, the second specifically a queer female phenomenology, and the third, phenomenology as an issue of race. The figure of the table plays a major part of the book, as Ahmed gives a very thorough exploration of how past philosophers have used the table as a metaphor for the project of philosophy, and how their orientation to that table reveals or hides aspects of their larger orientation. I'm always impressed when scholars manage to meaningfully draw on their own experiences, and Sara Ahmed's life as a queer PoC absolutely plays a major role in discussion. She also does another thing that I always appreciate in a scholarly book: the conclusion is not something that's a tossed off summary, almost afterthought on what came before, but a true culmination and extension of her ideas into the future. (Adrienne Shaw's Gaming at the Edge is another exemplar of the well-written academic book conclusion.) The second chapter focuses on queerness, and points out that the world is typically prepared for people so that they are straight. Just as, for the philosopher Husserl, a lot had to be in place for him to start writing philosophy (someone taking care of the children, a table made by someone else, etc), so does a queer person enter a world prepared for them to be straight. The orientation of this world is towards straightness. Borrowing from Chinese philosophy, there is a dao that you are being inducted into, and it's a dao of straightness. I started reading Queer Phenomenology because it occurred to me that the philosophy of phenomenology could do a lot to explain elements of queerness. Phenomenology seeks to ground the practice of philosophy in everyday life by showing that all our abstractions start in the world as we live it day-to-day. At the same time it's a philosophical investigation into what our everyday experiences are really like. I realized that this approach could say a lot of productive things about queerness. How do you know who you're attracted to? What's the difference between that and "being" queer? How do you know what your gender is---what your gender isn't? A phenomenologist could investigate what goes on inside you while you try to figure these questions out.May, Todd. 2005. Foucault’s relation to phenomenology. In The Cambridge Companion to Foucault, 2nd ed, ed. Gary Gutting, 284–311. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.