A Phenomenology for Women of Color: Merleau Ponty and Identity in Difference

This book argues that Merleau-Ponty’s focus on embodied experience offers a powerful framework for understanding how race persists, shapes lived relations, and helps conceptualize the identity of women of color. A Phenomenology for Women of Color: Merleau-Ponty and Identity-in-Difference explores how phenomenology can help philosophy of race explain the persistence of race as a key indicator of social standing. Engaging with the work of women of color to think more deeply about our racial and gendered structural relations with one another, Emily S. Lee argues that phenomenology is helpful in two ways: (1) race, as a social construct, is phenomenal and (2) Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology centers on embodiment and therefore applies to both feminist and racial concerns. Lee defines the phenomenon of race as a structure that is open-ended, is developed creatively, and mediates one’s situatedness in the world and relations with others. Drawing on ideas from Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, and Merleau-Ponty, this book depicts the dynamic and creative expressions of race and racism to address the ambiguities within the experiences of race and sex and, ultimately, to conceptualize the identity group “women of color.”