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Simulating the lived experience of racism and islamophobia: on ‘embodied empathy’ and political tourism

journal contribution
posted on 2017-01-02, 00:00 authored by Helen NgoHelen Ngo
This paper considers a certain genre of anti-racist solidarity — what I call simulations of lived experience – in order to critically examine the premises and pitfalls of such efforts. Two primary examples are examined: (1) a 2014 smartphone app called Everyday Racism, where users are invited to ‘play’ a racialised character for a week in order to ‘better understand’ the experience of racism; and (2) various iterations of ‘Hijab Day’, where non-Muslim women are invited to wear a hijab for a day. I argue that both examples, while well-intentioned, offer only a ‘thin’ version of the lived experience of veiled Muslim women and people of colour, failing to reckon with the epistemological and phenomenological complexity entailed in this embodied experience. Moreover, I argue that both proceed on the misguided idea that first-hand experience, rather than empathic listening, is generative of anti-racist solidarity, and in doing so, these efforts risk reproducing the very structures and habits of white privilege they set out to challenge.

History

Journal

Australian Feminist Law Journal

Volume

43

Pagination

107-123

Location

Melbourne, Vic.

ISSN

1320-0968

eISSN

2204-0064

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2017, Australian Feminist Law Journal

Issue

1

Publisher

Taylor & Francis Australasia