Queer Phenomenology Essay

Ahmed claims that “Familiarity is what is, as it were, given, and which in being given ‘gives’ the body the capacity to be orientated in this way or in that. The question of orientation becomes, then, a question not only about how we ‘find our way’ but how we come to ‘feel at home’” (7). This is central to the experience of being mixed-race since although we may “feel at home” in certain spaces, the lack of those orientations around “mixed-raceness” causes us to constantly be disoriented. Ahmed herself noticed the pattern: “Wanting to be white for the mixed race child is about the lived experience of not being white even when whiteness is ‘at home’” (146). While disorientation is central to the mixed-race experience and clearly offers a new perspective on racism, this is not isolated to us. Ahmed oversimplified the possibility and the options of queering race, yet there is

Ahmed’s book, Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, is a remarkably fresh analysis of these issues. Deeply rooted in her own experiences as a queer mixed-race woman of color, she is able to include a wide range of identities within her one theory. She is able to resist lines because she is not allowed to be on them, and from this unique perspective she offers an approach that is substantial. Not only is she establishing what the problems are, but she also attempts to solve them as well. Although she fails to see the variety of possible solutions for queering race, her proposals nonetheless are inclusive in their application to all individuals. The push for intersectional, or in Ahmed’s case intersecting lines, has allowed feminist and queer theorists to finally allow their works to a wide-range of individuals. I greatly hope that this will only continue as the fields move