Playfulness, “World”-Traveling, and Loving Perception
María Lugones
Feminist Philosophy of Mind July 7, 2022 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190867614.003.0006 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that when an oppressed person moves between social worlds that perceive her differently, she experiences an ontological paradox in which the same person appears to hold contradictory attributes at once. The author proposes that attributes of consciousness are world-dependent, concluding that the self is "a plurality of selves" and that subjectivity is neither unitary, universal, nor ahistorical. |
Abstract
Abstract This chapter considers the ontological implications of encountering varying levels of intelligibility when one traverses social structures, such as when one immigrates to a new culture or works in a place with people of a different economic class than one’s own. This chapter terms this phenomenon “world-traveling,” which the chapter understands as the shift in self-experience that occurs when an oppressed person moves from an environment where she is readily perceived as an active subject to one where she is perceived as a passive instrument of others’ wills and desires. Such a situation opens on an ontological paradox because it seems that the same person is capable of possessing two contradictory attributes at the same time. The chapter explains how this paradoxical situation could obtain by arguing that attributes of consciousness are world-dependent. It concludes that the self is actually “a plurality of selves” and that the structure of subjectivity is neither unitary, universal, nor ahistorical.