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Continuing on Alia Al-Saji’s “A Phenomenology of Hesitation: Interrupting Racializing Habits of Seeing” (2014), Maurice Merleau-Ponty's “The Spatiality of One’s Own Body and Motility" from Phenomenology of Perception (1945), Linda Martín Alcoff’s “Identity as Visible and Embodied” and “Perception" sections from Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (2006), and ch. 1 of Alex Vitale's The End of Policing (2017).
Can we restructure our (and the police's) reactions and live with each other? We further explore the psychology of habit and Al-Saji's notion of hesitation. How does it compare to other types of heistation recommended by philosophies and religions?
We didn't make the time to go much into Vitale's book, which is excellent. You might want to listen to him talk about it himself on the Verso Books podcast.
Begins on part one, or get the full, ad-free Citizen Edition. Supporting us will get you access to our new Citizen Hang series, previewed at the end of this.
End song: "Every Man's Burden" by Dusty Wright, as interviewed on Nakedly Examined Music #89.
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Two matters. I hope you can widen the colors of your discussants. (As you are only voices, can we have broader variety of sounds.) Secondiy, guns. The huge number guns civilians have access to is, I am certain, a controlling factor in militarization, or hesitation, or any citizen police interaction.
You might enjoy our past discussions with Lawrence Ware (six of them, four being on race; he teaches in this area), Myisha Cherry (on bell hooks), and Coleman Hughes (two on social construction, the second being on Mills and Appiah).
This is a good direction for your podcast
Having now listened to and enjoyed the whole episode, I do wonder how much this approach will move the needle on either side. The podcast started from the assumption that police attitudes need to change (which I agree with), but I was hoping the fundamentals of the problem itself were going to be examined. A Merleau-Ponty style approach to these deeper questions could have been very fruitful. After all, isn’t philosophy (and especially phenomenological analysis) good at examining base assumptions? Perhaps I was expecting something this episode simply wasn’t meant to tackle, but given the contentiousness of the issues discussed I think a lot of people are searching for these deeper investigations. Still, thanks for the episode.
I thought this was a worthwhile “excursion” and a thought-provoking discussion.
I think what Phil Hopkins says at the end of the entire double-length podcast is absolutely true. I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve learned a lot here and elsewhere or not, but to me it has gotten better with time and experience. Or as Merleau-Ponty might say it: Phenomenologically, I don’t know if this effect is being produced by me as a subject, or if the facticity of the object is the natural-state becoming of the podcast. Either way, this was one of my favorite episodes.
Thanks, Brian!