Episode 54 I was so hungry

Our explorations in phenomenology have led us to understand consciousness as submerged in the world of perception. I have made a case for understanding this phenomenological world  not as material world, but as a social world. I keep drawing upon Merleau-Ponty’s image of the blindfolded person who uses a stick to gain perceptual experience of the objects in a darkened room. In today’s episode I play with the idea that it is language, or grammar, that serves as the ‘stick’ by which social bodies move through and perceive the social world.

The episode moves from green coffee cups (not coffee green cups) to those blue suitcases, to the mainstream three pretty girls in a young woman’s account of being bullied at school. It’s the personal account that’s most important. My favourite way to explore the structure of the social body/world is to go megalocal: to examine personal, intimate accounts of people’s felt sense of belonging or not belonging.

Here’s a transcript of Maryam’s account: