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Anonymity and Diversity: A Phenomenology of Self-Formation in Urban Culture

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Abstract

In this paper, I show how phenomenological analysis of unreflective dimensions of our experience has implications for our participation in an increasingly urban and multicultural world. I draw on Merleau-Ponty’s account in Phenomenology of Perception of how bodily capabilities are rooted in unreflective, or “anonymous,” resources furnished by the environment. I apply his analysis to the experience of inhabiting a city, which I argue encourages the development of a perspective inclusive of diversity that offers a means of challenging forms of social and political oppression. I consider how expression, as a further dimension of experience that draws on anonymous resources, plays a critical role in our developing the terms according to which we understand ourselves and the environment we inhabit. I argue that giving voice to diverse experiences is a crucial complement to the challenge to oppressive social and political structures we discover in the anonymous dimensions of urban experience.

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Notes

  1. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 113, 2012, p. 86).

  2. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 182, 2012, p. 147).

  3. See Zahavi (2002, pp. 75–89) for a detailed discussion of the relation between the first-person perspective of phenomenological inquiry and the unthematic anonymity that underlies experience.

  4. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 113, 2012, p. 86).

  5. Heinämaa (2015, p. 129) discusses Merleau-Ponty’s account of the relation between the personal self and the anonymous self, and its indebtedness to Husserl’s phenomenology.

  6. For a rich discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of the phenomenon of generality, see Jacobson (2017).

  7. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 171, 2012, p. 139).

  8. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 171, 2012, p. 139).

  9. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 171, 2012, p. 139).

  10. See Young (2005).

  11. See Wirth (1938).

  12. Wirth (1938, p. 8).

  13. Wirth (1938, pp. 9–10).

  14. Wirth (1938, pp. 6–7).

  15. Totah (2012, p. 77).

  16. Rabbat (2012, pp. 54–55).

  17. Totah (2012, pp. 77–79).

  18. Wirth (1938, pp. 6–7).

  19. Wirth (1938, p. 10).

  20. Jane Jacobs makes a similar point in The Death and Life of Great American Cities. See Jacobs (1992, p. 147).

  21. Wirth (1938, p. 10). See also Jacobs (1992, p. 145).

  22. Bettencourt et al. (2008, p. 288).

  23. Jacobs (1992, p. 30), Wirth (1938, pp. 11–12).

  24. Wirth (1938, p. 12).

  25. See Jacobs (1992, pp. 143–151).

  26. Jacobs (1992, pp. 148–150).

  27. Wirth (1938, p. 12), see also Bettencourt et al. (2008, p. 286).

  28. Wirth (1938, p. 12).

  29. Wirth (1938, p. 14).

  30. Wirth (1938, pp. 12–13).

  31. In his recent book Sites of Exposure: Art, Politics, and the Nature of Experience, John Russon provides an excellent analysis of the relation between the anonymity of public environments and forms of social oppression. Russon argues that the “indifference” of the public domain, where individuals are able to recognize themselves and others as equal participants in a world outside the more narrow confines of domestic life, is an important achievement of law and other public institutions. However, he observes that this indifference remains relative in so far as it is always necessarily rooted in the determinate terms of a particular culture, with its concomitant preferences and prejudices. Russon’s analysis is especially helpful for understanding how the anonymity of urban environments may obscure and further reinforce forms of social oppression. See Russon (2017, especially pp. 65–79).

  32. Kittay (1999, p. 41). For a fuller discussion of this point, see Kittay (1999, pp. 29–48).

  33. The White House (2017) recently published an article on its website that states that illegal immigration “de-skills the labor force, puts downward pressure on wages, and increases the deficit.”

  34. Passel and D’Vera Cohn (2009, pp. 3, 14).

  35. Passel and D’Vera Cohn (2009, p. 31).

  36. Bernhardt et al. (2007, pp. 53–56, 73–76).

  37. Bernhardt et al. (2007, p. v).

  38. Fillion (2008, p. 71), emphasis in original.

  39. Fillion (2008, p. 73), emphasis in original.

  40. al-Sabouni (2016, p. 70).

  41. Fillion makes a similar point in an example he gives in his introduction and returns to throughout the text: “A group of people are speaking a language that I acknowledge is foreign to me, but obviously not to them, which means, in an “increasingly multicultural world,” that I am prepared to restrict my ascription of “foreignness” to the language and not to the speakers themselves” (2008, p. 5).

  42. Fillion (2008, p. 71).

  43. Wirth (1938, p. 16).

  44. See Villazor (2010) for a discussion of how sanctuary cities illuminate tensions between national citizenship recognized by the U. S. federal government and local citizenship granted by cities.

  45. One of the oft-cited motivations for “sanctuary city” policies that protect community members from inquiry into their immigration status is that they are more likely to report crimes to local law enforcement (see, for example, Villazor [2010, pp. 593–594]). Because victims of violent crimes are often members of socially oppressed groups, such policies have the potential to challenge entrenched forms of oppression. For example, according to research cited in Messing et al. (2015), intimate partner violence is “the most common type of violence experienced by Latina immigrants” (p. 328), who, because of a combination of patriarchal societal pressures (both within the immigrant community and the larger community it is part of) and fear of deportation, may be unlikely to report this abuse (pp. 329–330). In light of their research, Messing et al. (2015) conclude that “In the longer term, advocacy for comprehensive immigration reform that guarantees legal provision or status for immigrant women would reduce the vulnerability of undocumented immigrant victims. With some form of legal standing, immigrant victims would be humanized and their social welfare would be less affected by their documentation status” (p. 337).

  46. Adichie (2009).

  47. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 224, 2012, p. 189, emphasis in original).

  48. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 224, 2012, p. 189).

  49. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 217, 2012, p. 183).

  50. Cixous (1976, p. 880).

  51. See Howell (2016, pp. 168–182) for a more detailed discussion of Merleau-Ponty’s analysis of “instituted speech” as both a fund of established meaning and a source for new meaning in “authentic expression.”

  52. Merleau-Ponty (1945, p. 239, 2012, p. 203).

  53. See Waldenfels (2000, pp. 96–97) for consideration of Merleau-Ponty’s notion, in his later work, of the “excessive” nature of expression, and the consequent impossibility of a “complete or exhaustive expression.”

  54. Jacobs (1992, pp. 409–410).

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  1. Philosophy Department, La Salle University, 1900 W. Olney Ave., Philadelphia, PA, 19141, USA

    Whitney Howell

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Howell, W. Anonymity and Diversity: A Phenomenology of Self-Formation in Urban Culture. Topoi 40, 471–480 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9605-x

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