Experiencing Political Conflict

This book systematically investigates the nature of political conflict. It combines the tools and insights of existential phenomenology with those from critical theory and qualitative social research to inquire into the ways that we experience conflict in contemporary polities.

Though political conflict is an inevitable feature of human life—and one that seems ever-more on our minds in today’s democratic societies—it has so far garnered little attention in political philosophy as a phenomenon in its own right. Arguing that the current state of political conflict and its theorization constitutes a crisis analogous to those identified by Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty, this book employs the phenomenological method to appreciate the experiential depth and complexity of political conflict. Furthermore, it emphasizes the spatial and bodily origins of our clashes. The author’s analysis, which is based on interview data with political actors and a fruitful dialogue between ‘classical’ phenomenologists, feminist theory, and critical philosophy of race, shows that political conflict often ends up irresolvable because of the way that power asymmetrically situates us vis-à-vis one another. Ultimately, the book argues that it is only through an inter-corporeality grounded in a political flesh that particularly intractable forms of conflict can be tamed.

Experiencing Political Conflict will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working in phenomenology, social and political philosophy, and critical theory.