In quest of a new humanism Embodiment, experience and phenomenology as critical geography

• Published in: Progress in human geography Vol. 37; no. 1; pp. 10 - 26
• Main Author: Simonsen, Kirsten
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.02.2013; Arnold; Sage Publications Ltd
• Subjects: Bgi / Prodig; Cities; Deconstruction; Embodiment; Geodemographics; Geography; Human agency; Human geography; Human subjects; Humanism; Materialism; Ontology; Otherness; Phenomenology; Politics; Population geography and social geography; Posthumanism; Poststructuralism; Reading; Social geography; Social life; Social life & customs; Strangers; phenomenology; anti-humanism; agency; bodies; posthumanism; otherness; humanism; experience; Human geography; Phenomenology; Social life; Post-humanism; Agency; Human body; Difference; Humanism; Philosophy
• ISSN: 0309-1325; 1477-0288
• DOI: 10.1177/0309132512467573

During the last 20 years anti-humanist and posthumanist thinking have gained a strong foothold in human geography. This development has indisputable benefits regarding our understanding of the power-knowledge complex, representation and ‘new materialisms’, respectively, but it has also had a troubled relationship to the comprehension of lived experience, notions of agency and politics. This paper aims to explore how a practice-oriented re-reading of phenomenology can contribute to a ‘new humanism’ after anti-/posthumanism. The paper starts from a research study on ‘The Stranger, the city and the nation’, which I have recently completed with my colleague Lasse Koefoed. The purpose is to embed the subsequent philosophical discussions in their consequences for the empirical analysis of social life. The re-reading of phenomenology revolves around three issues: thinking the body as a phenomenal, lived body; orientation and disorientation in the directions and possibilities of social life; and the phenomenological travel along the anti-/posthumanist lane. The paper concludes with a suggestion of a ‘new humanism’ that avoids the rationalist and self-righteous claims of the old ones but maintains elements of the experiential dimension of social life, the acknowledgement of the other and the significance of human agency.