IN DEFENSE OF FEMINIST PHENOMENOLOGY: LIVED BODY, FACTICITY AND THE PROBLEM OF ESSENTIALISM

The aim of this paper is to present an overview of the main themes and concepts cultivated in the intersection between phenomenology and feminism, as well as to introduce some of the authors whose research has impacted the field. To that effect, I first analyze the seminal works which helped consolidate the discipline that would come to be known as “feminist phenomenology”, focusing next on relevant notions to the topic at hand, such as the concepts of lived body and facticity. In doing so, I intend to show that, even though phenomenology itself may have been charged with engendering essentialist arguments, the possibility of further non-essentialist unfolding within a phenomenological framework can contribute a great deal to the solution to a number of laborious, yet central deadlocks currently plaguing feminism as a theory as much as a political movement.