A Phenomenology of Whiteness: An Analysis on Ahmed

How can Ahmed’s discussion of navigating blackness in orientation to whiteness be analogous to other examples other than having a disability or being aneurotypical?

The feminist philosopher’s essay can be divided up into four main sections: orientations, habit worlds, ‘being not’ bodies, and her conclusion on arrivals. Her discussion of orientation can be best thought of as being akin to the white gaze, but in application to the real world and its spaces; for instance, Ahmed would likely say that we live in a world that is orientated towards white people, where institutional spaces have defaulted white people as its inhabitants and authority. This leaves out blacks and other colored bodies, given that the world is not orientated towards them and poses unique challenges to their orientations. In other words, Ahmed contends that the world and its spaces are ordered in a way that favors the disposition towards white people– a privilege that is not extended to black bodies and other colored people. This is parallel to Ahmed’s following conception of the ‘habit world,’ where she establishes that society has been habituated to follow white ideologies as the standard practice. Ahmed argues that as a result, black bodies are denied their being and made invisible/belittled. This is underscored by the fact that white people occupy the main crux of the ‘background’, meaning that they have resources and people behind them to support whiteness in a way that black bodies are deprived of. Finally, Ahmed exacerbates the invisibility of the black experience by contrasting it with the stark noticeability of blackness when they enter and occupy white-dominated spaces, rendering the disorientation of whiteness. The clear juxtaposition of the ‘arrival’ of black or colored bodies demonstrates the deep extent to which whiteness is centered in our world. 

Ahmed opens her paper by proclaiming that “whiteness could be described as an ongoing and unfinished history” that orientates bodies in certain directions, “affecting how they ‘take up’ space’ and what they ‘can do’” (149, Ahmed). She suggests that non-white bodies experience a certain level of restrictiveness that limits their freedom in ways that white people are never bound by, due to their ‘worldliness’ and orientation. Such orientation describes a default disposition that society caters to, in this case, to the norms of white people and white culture. Ahmed’s concept of ‘orientation’ is perhaps best illustrated with her analogy of a neurotypical person. A person with disabilities who is living in a neurotypical world experiences unique challenges due to their needs being unaccomodated for; society is oriented toward normal people with full capabilities, and thus unintentionally discriminates against disabled individuals by not taking them into consideration. The act of ‘ignoring’ an entire subset of the population can also be applied to the black experience. Ergo, this creates an invisible standard that all ‘colored’ people are held to, and that white people are exempt from. With respect to the concept of racial orientation, Ahmed also asserts that “whiteness is inherited through the very placement of things”– bringing in special relations and the dynamic of familiarity (155, Ahmed). Familial bonds, ancestral ties, have a sort of shared proximity to each other and space that can be inherited. There is an element of likeness to societal orientations– to which Ahmed suggests that we inherit proximities, spaces, and hence orientations themselves. 

In discussing the construction of habit worlds in an effort to explain how whiteness holds its place, Ahmed describes the way in which bodies take up space through habitual actions that allow white predominance to maintain its power (Ahmed, 156). The paper explores how whiteness can be considered and functions as a habit that we actively breathe, live, and practice. “A phenomenology of whiteness helps us to notice institutional habits; it brings what is behind to the surface in a certain way” (149, Ahmed). In doing so, Ahmed discusses the concept of reification multiple times in her essay; according to google dictionary, reification means to make something more abstract or real. Ahmed proposes that whiteness is “lived as a background experience”-- suggesting that the world of whiteness and its dominance is something that humans constantly live in, but do not engage in. She says that the experience of whiteness is almost like something that is subconscious, but never fully recognized. Ahmed considers what ‘whiteness’ does without assuming whiteness as an ontological given but as that which has been received, or become given, over time. Thus, the ‘orientation’ Ahmed expounds upon is a part of this background experience. This also breeds the concept of ‘habit’ that Ahemed discusses in the second section of her essay. To put it simply, society’s orientation towards whiteness becomes an accepted habit for people of all kinds, whether willingly or against the will.

Ahmed’s third section, titled ‘being not’ bodies, explores the negation that black people experience, particularly the denial of black people as full human beings. She proclaims that “to be black in ‘the white world’ is to turn back towards itself, to become an object,” which not only limits black expression and occupation in the world, but it also means that black people are “diminished as an effect of the bodily extensions of others” (161, Ahmed). She employs the example of being ‘stopped’– both in a literal and metaphorical sense– to describe the unsolicited trauma that black people go through. For instance, to be ‘stopped’ can refer to the impalpable pain of having one’s dreams interrupted, being prohibited from engaging in something that welcomes other groups, being limited to certain options without the ability to move on to bigger aspirations, being confined to certain spaces and having restricted mobility. For instance, there are only a handful of black people who go into academia– not because they are not smart or hardworking enough, but purely because their conditions are inhibited from taking up the same opportunities provided to white people– financial, racial, social, and otherwise. Physical and more immediate examples of black bodies being stopped include the ‘stop and search’ enforced by policemen, as well as being double checked at the airport due to one’s race or nationality. Ahmed proclaims that “being stopped is not just stressful: it makes the ‘body’ itself the ‘site’ of social stress: (161, Ahmed). Thus, the experience of the black man is one of a persistent feeling of negation, and lives in a “third person consciousness” due to being constantly objectified by a white orientation.