Racist habits: a phenomenological analysis of racism and the habitual body Ngo, Helen 2016, Racist habits: a phenomenological analysis of racism and the habitual body, Philosophy and social criticism, vol. 42, no. 9, pp. 847-872, doi: 10.1177/0191453715623320. Attached Files Name Description MIMEType Size Downloads Title Racist habits: a phenomenological analysis of racism and the habitual body Author(s) Ngo, Helen orcid.org/0000-0001-7445-3625 Journal name Philosophy and social criticism Volume number 42 Issue number 9 Start page 847 End page 872 Total pages 26 Publisher SAGE Publications Place of publication London, Eng. Publication date 2016 ISSN 0191-4537 1461-734X Keyword(s) embodiment habit Maurice Merleau-Ponty phenomenology racism Arts & Humanities Social Sciences Philosophy Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary Social Sciences - Other Topics PHILOSOPHICAL-ANALYSIS Summary This article examines how the phenomenological concept of habit can be productively deployed in the analysis of racism, in order to propose a reframing of the problem. Racism does not unfold primarily in the register of conscious thought or action, I argue, but more intimately and insidiously in the register of bodily habit. This claim, however, relies on a reading of habit as bodily orientation - or habituation - as developed by Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception. Drawing on his account, I turn to two salient dimensions of racist praxis which I argue are better understood through the frame of habit: bodily gesture or response, and racialized perception. Building onthe analyses of contemporary critical race thinkers, I argue that racismis habitual insofar as it is embedded in bodily modes of responding to the presentation of racialized ‘others’ and in ‘sedimented’ modes of racialized seeing. However, this is not to suggest that the acquisition of racist habits is passive, or that such habits foreclose the possibility of change. In the final section, I revisit the concept of habit and its usual characterization as ‘sedimentation’ or ‘calcification’. I argue that while such a reading gives voice to the anchoring weight of the temporal past in habit, a more prospective rendering of the concept is available to us through a rereading of sedimentation as active passivity; habits are not only acquired, they are also held. This in turn will allow us to recast the question of responsibility in relation to one’s racist habits. Language eng DOI 10.1177/0191453715623320 Field of Research 2203 Philosophy 1606 Political Science Socio Economic Objective 0 Not Applicable HERDC Research category C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal ERA Research output type C Journal article Copyright notice ©2016, The Author(s) Persistent URL http://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30089946 Document type: Journal Article Collections: Faculty of Arts and Education School of Humanities and Social Sciences Related Links Link Description Connect to published version Go to link with your DU access privileges   Connect to Elements publication management system Go to link with your DU access privileges     Unless expressly stated otherwise, the copyright for items in DRO is owned by the author, with all rights reserved. Versions Version Filter Type Mon, 05 Dec 2016, 13:17:14 EST Tue, 06 Dec 2016, 04:01:20 EST Tue, 06 Dec 2016, 10:21:54 EST Wed, 03 May 2017, 06:03:31 EST Wed, 07 Jun 2017, 10:39:18 EST Wed, 07 Jun 2017, 10:44:49 EST Thu, 15 Jun 2017, 08:13:35 EST Filtered Full Citation counts:   Cited 16 times in TR Web of Science Cited 19 times in Scopus Search Google Scholar Access Statistics: 539 Abstract Views, 1 File Downloads  -  Detailed Statistics Created: Mon, 05 Dec 2016, 13:17:14 EST