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The Natural Attitude’s Objectivism as a Type of Closure

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The Lived Experience of Hate Crime

Part of the book series: Contributions to Phenomenology ((CTPH,volume 111))

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Abstract

This chapter connects some of our earlier more descriptive analyses with an emerging critical stance that is more fully developed later during Part Two. In this chapter we characterise some of the distinctive effects of the natural attitude as including a form of cognitive closure and resulting exclusions of experiential aspects of hate crime. This is a highly prejudicial form whose operations tend to be self-fulfilling in the sense of a dogmatic and implicit form of self-validation that bypass expressly discursive justification. Going against the grain of such closure-by-exclusion, which is also exclusion-by-closure, we argue that it is vital to salvage what is excluded. Such a salvaging operation is needed to gain access to a mass of qualitative data, and thereby broaden out the source material of hate crime studies.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In mid- January 2018, President Donald Trump reported asked a group of senators why the US had to allow in immigrants from “shithole countries” in Africa and the Caribbean rather than from places like Norway.’ See the Independent, ‘Norwegians tell Trump we don’t want to come to your s∗∗∗hole country,’ 12/01/2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/norwegians-tell-trump-we-dont-want-to-come-to-your-shole-country-a8156666.html. See also https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/shithole-countries-where-trump-insulted-photos-beautiful-destinations-a8155676.html

  2. 2.

    Husserl, 1970: § 58.

  3. 3.

    Havi Carel and Darian Meacham (eds.) Phenomenology and Naturalism: Examining the Relationship between Human Experience and Nature, Cambridge: CUP, 2013.

  4. 4.

    See Michael Salter, ‘On the idea of a legal world,’ 1(3) International Journal of the Legal Profession, 1994: 283: Published Online: 28 Apr 2010. cf. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09695958.1994.9960380

  5. 5.

    Husserl, 1970: 68.

  6. 6.

    Ibid: 57.

  7. 7.

    Ibid: 57.

  8. 8.

    Husserl describes what passes as a “normal” perception within the natural attitude as follows: ‘Original, normal perception has the primordial mode, “being valid simpliciter”; this is what we call straightforward, naive certainty. The appearing object is there in uncontested and unbroken certainty.’ 1991: 75.

  9. 9.

    The reasons why this can at most be a relatively outsider position have been explored by the hermeneutic tradition, which denies the possibility of anyone ever being able to step entirely outside the confines, assumption and prejudices of their cultural tradition. Our own position is that an insider/outsider distinction is not an either/or black and white relationship but rather a broad spectrum, and it is clearly possible, despite everything, to distinguish between different shades of grey. Over time and in stages, it remains possible to push our consciousness of our own prejudices relevant to hate crime issues further towards the self-reflective “outsider” end of this broad spectrum. The fact that this discussion is even possible is surely experiential evidence of this?

  10. 10.

    Husserl, Ideas 11: 183.

  11. 11.

    Husserl, 1925/77: 85.

  12. 12.

    Ibid.

  13. 13.

    Ibid.

  14. 14.

    In his lectures in passive association, Husserl states: ‘Let us begin with any external perception. If we observe an unchanging object at rest, for example, a tree standing before us, we pass over it with our eyes, now we step closer to it, now back away from it, now here, now there, we see it now from this, now from that side. During this process the object is constantly given to us as unchanged, as the same; we see it as such; and yet a slight turn of our attention teaches us that the so-called perceptual images, the modes of appearance, the aspects of the object constantly change. In a constant variation of modes of appearance, perspectives, that is, during a constant variation in the actual lived experience of perception, we have a consciousness that runs through them and connects them up, a consciousness of the one and the same object. This variation is given to consciousness, and yet it is hidden in a certain way; in the normal attitude, the natural attitude that is turned outward toward things, we do not consciously notice the variation.’ 2001: 34.

  15. 15.

    Husserl goes onto to state: ‘This is to say that instead of carrying out a conscious lived-experience naively, we can make any kind of conscious lived-experience thematic by reflecting on it; and then – be it with respect to the temporal stretches of its variable continuity, be it in comparison with other such separated lived-experiences – we can always find they make possible an evident consciousness of the identity of the content, that what two consciousnesses intend is the same.’ Ibid, 35.

  16. 16.

    Husserl recognises this when he states: ‘I spoke of a turning of attention. More specifically, I spoke of a turning of the thematic regard and even more precisely of a reflection. In fact, we speak of a reflection in all cases, where in any kind of conscious lived-experience a direction of the thematic regard is prefigured from the very start as normal, that is, as a necessary, thematic attitude that serves as a starting point from which we must turn away in order to get hold of something new in our conscious lived-experience. Customarily and from the very outset, we consider attentive perceiving, that is, this normal thematic directedness toward the external object, as belonging to the concept of external perception. But a reflective conversion of the thematic regard is possible at any time and in an evident manner, and then our perceptual images themselves become graspable and grasped’ Ibid, 34.

  17. 17.

    In other words, “X” in “the problem of X or with X” can stand for not only members of hate crime victim groups in the sense of, say, “the problem with these immigrants” but also government, media and even academic studies into any aspect of hate crime and hate speech, such as “the problem with underfunded victim support services.”

  18. 18.

    To be fair to Donald Trump’s notorious borderline hate speech on this topic, most Western “liberal” states’ immigration, entry visa and nationality criteria are at least covertly racist in some sense of this term. See Kevin R. Johnson, ‘Race, The Immigration Laws, And Domestic Race Relations: a “Magic Mirror” into the Heart of Darkness, 73 Indiana Law Journal (Fall, 1998): 1111–1159; Alan Travis, ‘Ministers saw law’s ‘racism’ as defensible: Powell wielded influence over bill’s direction,’ The Guardian, UK, 1 Jan 2002: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/jan/01/uk.race.; Some advanced modern “liberal democratic” states, such as Israel, extend racial/religious standards of inclusion/exclusion to criteria for full citizenship status as well, even to the point where Arab-Israeli citizen has become a problematic term. See Peter Beaumont, ‘EU leads criticism after Israel passes Jewish ‘nation state’ law: Legislation stipulates only Jews have right of self-determination in the country,’ The Guardian UK, 19 July 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jul/19/israel-adopts-controversial-jewish-nation-state-law

  19. 19.

    See, for example, Jonas Bergman, ‘Donald Trump prefers immigrants from Norway but more Americans move to Scandinavia than vice versa: Controversial US President favours affluent Norwegians over asylum seekers from ‘s∗∗∗thole countries’ but feeling seemingly not mutual,’ The Independent, UK, 15 January 2018: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-shithole-countries-norway-immigration-american-emigrants-scandinavia-a8159441.html; Robert Kuttner, ‘How Do You Say Shithole In Norwegian?’ Huffington Post, 01/14/2018: https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how-do-you-say-shithole-in-norwegian_us_5a5c0fe4e4b0fcbc3a1167fe. More generally, BBC News: ‘Donald Trump: Free speech v hate speech,’ 8 December 2015: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-35041402

  20. 20.

    The relativity of notions of normality and their emergence out of specific performative practices and discourses is clear if we reflect on how a clearly well-fed body represent the ideal of healthiness in some societies, while in others thing and athletic bodies are widely interpreted as “healthy.” Similar points apply to variations concerning other material aspects of social life perceived of as normal and abnormal. Husserl, 2001: xxix. xxxvii. xlv. liii. 27, 267; A. Steinbock, ‘Phenomenological concepts of normality and abnormality,’ 28 Man and World, (1995): 241–260; J. Taipale, ‘Twofold normality: Husserl and the normative relevance of primordial constitution,’ 28 Husserl Studies, (2012): 49–60. Cf. M. Wehrle, ‘Normality and normativity in experience,’ In M. Doyon & T. Breyer (Eds.), Normativity in Perception, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015: 128–139; S. Heinämaa, ‘Transcendental intersubjectivity and normality: Constitution by mortals,’ In R. T. Jensen & D. Moran (Eds.), The phenomenology of embodied subjectivity, Dordrecht: Springer 2013: 83–104; Judith Butler, Bodies that matter, New York: Routledge, 1993.

  21. 21.

    When we perceive someone else, there is also in play a source of a certain “aiming beyond” what is concretely intuited, with habitual – and possibly stereotypical – expectations delineating a horizon of supplementary determinations that contribute to the overall determinacy of the experience itself. Meeting a priest for the first time always-already brings with it both a knowledge and a potential knowledge about what being a priest means for us which refers to something of the already understood “priestly qualities” of this person which has not yet come into view. This pre-knowledge is often partly indeterminate as to its content, but it is never completely empty as in “I take people as I find them.” See Husserl 1973: 32 Habitual expectations always exist according to which there is always more to be seen in a phenomenon than what presently appears to intuition. As a result, each determination of what someone or something is, will always be is apprehended as a fulfilment or disappointment of a previous anticipation; while each new determination generates new expectations for future determinations.

  22. 22.

    Husserl’s lectures in passive association suggest that if we switch our focus away from consciousness of an interpreted signified reality, to the process of its signification - including the meaning of the sign, this involves a deviation from the natural attitude’s expectation of “normality:” ‘The moment our interest is directed toward the signs themselves and is arrested there (rupturing this normal function), like when it is directed toward the written signs or toward the flag that serves as a signal, abnormality shows up in the lived-experience itself. One feels that it goes against the grain, so to speak, and that one is not only violating a habit, but a habitual determinative end, a practical imperative. In this way we have thus also gained a deeper insight …’ Husserl, 2001: 27.

  23. 23.

    Arguably, question five is closely related to question four.

  24. 24.

    See ‘Shopkeeper quits after years of racism’ The Guardian, 13 April 2005. ‘Mr Hussain and Linda Livingstone bought the Ryelands Mini Market in 1991, and within days they were subjected to racist attacks after a man walked into the shop and demanded: “Get out of your chair, you fucking black monkey, and give me 20 cigarettes. … Mr Hussain has recorded more than 4000 separate incidents, including a fire-bomb and being shot at with live bullets on two occasions.’ https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/apr/13/race.ukcrime. Despite a well-documented campaign of racial harassment, leading to 46 separate criminal convictions of the perpetrators, no one was evicted from the Ryelands council estate in Lancaster. Nine people were convicted in July 1997 of crimes related to the petrol bombing of the shop. They included five juveniles who were sentenced to a total of 24 years and a seven-year sentence against 38-year-old Craig Wareing. A number of these and other earlier offenders were council tenants. In addition to physical violence, Mr Hassain and his partner had suffered hate speech including having ‘gangs outside chanting “If you want the Paki out clap your hands. If you want the Paki dead stamp your feet.”’ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/race-hate-victims-win-landmark-judgment-1233733.html

  25. 25.

    There is an entire Husserlian problematic of homeworlds and alienworlds, of self and others, which a multi-volume phenomenology of hate crime would need to address at some point. Klaus Held, ‘Le monde natal, le monde étranger, le monde un,’ In Samuel Ijsseling (ed.) Husserl Aussgabe und Husserl Forschung, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990: 9; J. N. Mohanty argues the constitution of the alter ego and the constitution of alien culture are both analogous in some respects and not analogous in others. Both are transcendental questions about the constitution of very sense of “otherness.” At the cultural level, our sense of “ownness” and “belonging” to a community of fellow members is always intertwined with the designated “otherness” of those who, for us, do not belong, and the sense of home and homeworlds is always intertwined with the foreign and alienworlds. See “The Other Culture” in Mano Daniel and Lester Embree eds., Phenomenology of the Cultural Disciplines, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994: 135–146. Cf. Michael Heunissen, The other, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1984: 89.

  26. 26.

    In terms of the interpretive constitution of the “X as no problem” with it is remarkable that, in March 1996 a defence lawyer in the Lancaster shopkeeper case just mentioned, involving the victimisation of Mel Hussain, sought to argue in mitigation for his client, who had been convicted of repeatedly racially harassing Mr. Hussain, that: ‘If one is abused occasionally, one can take offence. But if one is abused for four to five years, one becomes immune to it. It is like water off a duck’s back.” Mr Hassain had, over many years, recorded more than 4000 separate incidents, including a firebomb and being shot at with live bullets on two occasions. Ibid. See also the BBC report from 13 April, 2005: ‘Shopowner quits after ‘race hell:’ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/4440683.stm. In addition, another implicit “no problem” claim is found in the reported statement of a local councillor for the Ryelands estate area, Jean Horner, who allegedly stated: ‘It’s a case of least said, soonest mended with Mal. Other coloureds seem to have managed to make a success of shops in this area without any of these problems.’ Furthermore, on 4 August 2000, The Lancaster Guardian printed an article, ‘Put a sock in it Mal’, which Mr Hussein claimed increased hate crime attacks. Ian Herbert, op cit: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/how-racists-forced-storeholder-to-shut-up-shop-8002552.html

  27. 27.

    In the Mel Hassain case, Carol Broad, then a Labour councillor for Ryelands Estate, stated: ‘These appalling incidents and the sparsity of prosecutions shaped the couple’s view of the police more as ‘spectators. … the police saw Mal Hussain as the problem.’ In 1995 he made a successful complaint against one police officer for failing to take action over nuisance and damage to his shop and for a dismissive attitude. … Mal said that when he was shot at in 1993 the police failed to carry out a forensic investigation, take a statement or search for the bullet in his shop. He also produced evidence which disputed a council and police survey of crime and disorder in the region. The section concerning Ryelands reported zero racial incidents. Yet Mr Hussein had recorded details of five serious racist attacks with police log numbers during the six-month survey period.’ Michael Gillard and Melissa Jones, ‘Shot at, bombed, abused: life for one couple in racist Britain,’ The Guardian, UK, 2 March 1999. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/mar/02/race.world

  28. 28.

    Research literature discussing designated “under-reporting” and its various alleged contexts and explanations that interprets this as a purely factual issue is massive. Most recently see F. Pezzella, M. Fetzer, T. Keller, ‘The Dark Figure of Hate Crime Underreporting,’ American Behavioral Scientist, 2019, Jan. 28; K. Plumm, K. Leighton (2019) ‘Sexual Orientation and Gender Bias Motivated Violent Crime,’ In: Bornstein B., Miller M. (eds) Advances in Psychology and Law, Vol.4, Berlin: Springer, 2019: 258–280; Neil Chakraborti, ‘Responding to hate crime: Escalating problems, continued failings,’ 18(4) Criminology & Criminal Justice, (2018): 387–404.

  29. 29.

    For example, those campaigning on race hate crime issues, such as The National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR), have tended to make these connections. Lee Jasper, Secretary of NAAR commenting on the Hassain case, stated: ‘that of the thousands of incidents reported to the police, only a fraction were taken to court, despite the severity and consistency of the racist attacks… The news of Mal and Linda’s departure from the estate comes as an indictment on the record of the Lancashire Constabulary and the city council’s abject failure to enforce existing legislation, which provides them with the powers to prosecute racists.’ Ibid. In the Hassain case, litigation was brought by the hate crime victim against those he claimed had in effect, in terms of their deeds, “no problemed” his plight, at least to a large degree. The claimants claimed that their severe racial harassment was predominantly from Council tenants and their families from the same housing estate, and that they had informed the Council of such harassment from 1991 and updated them regularly. The court transcript cites their claim of partial no-probleming by the City Council as a series of failures to act despite having a duty and power to do so: ‘Has failed to cause the nuisance and acts of violence towards the Plaintiffs to cease. Has failed to institute and pursue possession proceedings and/or appropriate injunction proceedings or take any or any effective steps against the perpetrators of the nuisance and acts of violence. Has failed as set out above despite ample information being available from the Plaintiffs, the police and from its own officers or agents that would enable it to do so.’ https://court-appeal.vlex.co.uk/vid/-52584838. The harassment took the form of congregating outside the shop, intimidation, shouting abuse and threats, throwing bricks, stones and balls, smashing windows, burning objects put through the door. The defendant council clearly had the power to evict these perpetrators, a proportion of who had already been convicted, for causing a nuisance under the tenancy agreements and under the Housing Act 1985. However, their main response was to send letters to the designated perpetrators threatening them with eviction if they continued to harass Mal Hussain. Yet this response was ineffective because the council did not in fact take possession proceedings against any of the perpetrators for later acts of harassment. Hassain then brought an action against the council for their failure to prevent the nuisance when it was in their power to do so.

  30. 30.

    In the High Court and Court of Appeal litigation arising from the Hassain case discussed above, Lancashire Police, who admitted shortcomings, were initially found not liable for negligence with respect to their responses and non-responses to racist hate speech and crimes. See ‘Appeal to end racism hell,’ BBC News: Thursday, November 4, 1999: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/504484.stm. However, a later High Court judgement reversed this decision that there was no case to answer, holding that Lancashire Council, as a landlord of many of the perpetrators, could in principle have a legal duty to evict those responsible for racist hate crimes under the law of nuisance. See Patricia Wynn Davies, ‘Race-hate victims win landmark judgement,’ The Independent, UK 4 October 1997: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/race-hate-victims-win-landmark-judgment-1233733.html. After this preliminary ruling, Hassain’s lawyers stated: ‘This is a very welcome and even historic ruling … Up to now the law has been unclear. Now the High Court has ruled that local authorities can be liable as landlords for acts of nuisance including racial harassment when they fail to take action against the perpetrators.’ However, at the full High Court hearing his case against the council was rejected on 24 March 1998. Later, in 14th May 1998 the Court of Appeal rejected Mr Hussein’s action refusing him leave to appeal to the House of Lords. See Ian Herbert, ‘How racists forced storeholder to shut up shop: A storekeeper who has suffered up to 4000 race attacks in 13 years has finally had enough.’ The Independent, 23 July, 2003: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/how-racists-forced-storeholder-to-shut-up-shop-8002552.html; Hussain and another v Lancaster City Council: CA 14 May 1998; Times 27 May 1998, [1998] EWCA Civ 834, [2000] QB 1, [1999] 4 All ER 125. In essence, this exercise in judicial formalism concluded that a local Authority, as landlord of tenants committing gross racist acts, was not liable in nuisance or negligence to neighbours for its failure to control their behaviour even though it set out to attempt to do so. The case was held to be outside the scope of nuisance since the acts of the perpetrators did not involve the tenants’ use of the tenants’ land, and the Council had neither authorised nor adopted the nuisance.

  31. 31.

    On 17 March 1997, The Hassain case even generated a Parliamentary Early Day Motion No. 672 directed at “the problem of/with” the lack of effective official responses to his racial victimisation, which allegedly had largely no-problemed his case despite massive evidence to the contrary. This stated that: ‘although there have been 29 convictions for crimes against Mal Hussain and his property, the local police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Lancaster local authority have not so far taken the necessary action to protect Mr Hussain, Ms Livingstone and their property; therefore calls upon Lancaster City Council to evict the perpetrators of racial harassment under its racial harassment guidelines, and to give Mr Hussein and Ms Livingstone the option of buying their business at its full commercial value; calls upon the Lancaster police to take all action necessary to protect Mr Hussain, Ms Livingstone and their property; and calls upon the Crown Prosecution Service to vigorously pursue legal action against all appropriate individuals to bring the campaign of racial harassment on the Ryelands estate to an end.’ https://edm.parliament.uk/early-day-motion/13845/racial-harassment-of-mal-hussain

  32. 32.

    Ibid.

  33. 33.

    On instrumental rationality see T. Kelly, ‘Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique,’ 66 Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (2003): 612–40.

  34. 34.

    Heidegger, 2005: 56–7.

  35. 35.

    See ‘Trump claims ‘caravans’ of migrants in Mexico mean US ‘is being stolen,’ Guardian, UK, April 2, 2018: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/apr/02/trump-caravans-migrants-immigration-daca. More generally, BBC News: ‘Donald Trump: Free speech v hate speech, 8 December 2015: ‘Donald Trump has used his right to free speech to forge his way to the front of the race for the Republican presidential nomination - but elsewhere he might have been prosecuted. The First Amendment right to freedom of speech under the US constitution permits Donald Trump to make claims and proposals that others might deem unacceptable incitement. Mr Trump has claimed variously:

    • that Arab Americans cheered on the 9/11 attacks, despite a lack of evidence

    • that many Mexicans in the US are criminals and rapists

    • that there should be a mass deportation of illegal migrants in the US

    • most recently. That Muslims should be banned from entering the US solely on grounds of their religion

    In other countries, including many European ones where the experience of fascism is still deeply etched, some of these claims might well have fallen foul of hate-speech laws. … One UK citizen has even launched a petition – currently being considered by the parliament petitions service – seeking to ban Mr Trump from the UK for allegedly violating hate-speech laws. … The former leader of the far-right National Front in France, Jean-Marie Le Pen, has been convicted of hate speech and anti-Semitism, including Holocaust denial, by both French and German courts.’

  36. 36.

    See the earlier references to the Mal Hassain case. ‘Appeal to end racism hell,’ BBC News: Thursday, November 4, 1999: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/504484.stm

  37. 37.

    While the Nazis’ extermination of around 6 million European Jews, as well as thousands of Roma, is perhaps the most emphatic example, broadly similar aspects of this tendency towards singling out a specific group of citizens as supposedly “other-than-the-rest-of-us” can be seen throughout the history of genocidal programmes. See, for example, Susan Sontag, Machete Season: The Killers in Rwanda Speak, NY: Picador, 2006 which discusses the frequency with which Tutsi victims in the Rwandan genocide were characterised by their murderers in terms of a dehumanising terminology of snakes and cockroaches: one that had been actively encouraged to deploy by those whose words actively incited this genocide. Once the very existence of a group is singled out as raising, by the very existence of its own particular and distinctive cultural (or religious or ethnic) orientation a “question,” then the interpretive performance of that very act, which will often be based upon crude and prejudicial stereotypes and over-generalisations, may turn out to have sinister downstream implications irrespective of the original subjective interests and intentions of those carrying it out. Cf. The highly polarised debate on the significance of Karl Marx’s ‘On the Jewish Question,’ 1844” where issues of authorial intent and the unintended meaning of crass stereotypes of Judaism as capitalistic have been debated fiercely. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question/

  38. 38.

    Diane Frost, ‘The ‘enemy within’? Asylum, racial violence and ‘race hate’ in Britain today,’ 2(3) Twenty-First Century Society (2007): 227–248.

  39. 39.

    S. Jeffery-Poulter, Peers, queers, and commons: The struggle for gay law reform from 1950 to the present, London: Routledge, 1991; Mary Kite, and Kinsey Blue Bryant-Lees, ‘Historical and contemporary attitudes toward homosexuality,’ 43(2) Teaching of Psychology (2016): 164–170; R. S. Mitchell, The Homosexual & the Law, Arco; 1969; Kees Waaldijk, ‘Civil developments: Patterns of reform in the legal position of same-sex partners in Europe,’ 17 Can. J. Fam. L. (2000): 62; C. Waaldijk, Legal recognition of homosexual orientation in the countries of the world. A chronological overview with footnotes, [conference paper] 2009: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/handle/1887/14543/Waaldijk+2009+-+Legal+Recogniton+of+Homosexual+Orientation+-+Chronological+Overview.pdf?sequence=1; Kees Waaldijk, ‘Standard sequences in the legal recognition of homosexuality-Europe’s past, present and future,’ 4 Australasian Gay & Lesbian LJ (1994): 50; D. A. Salzberg, Sexuality and Transsexuality Under the European Convention on Human Rights: A Queer Reading of Human Rights Law, London Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019.

  40. 40.

    Marian Duggan, ‘Homophobic hate crime in Northern Ireland,’ In Hate Crime, Willan, 2017. 98–118; BBC News: ‘Derby men guilty over gay hate leaflets,’ 20 January 2012: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-16656679. Here, three Moslem defendants, successfully prosecuted and convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation claimed that their distribution of leaflets calling for the state killing of gays by hanging or stoning to death were simply following and quoting what their religion taught them about homosexuality, and that they did not intend to threaten anyone. In this case, taxi driver Ihjaz Ali, 42, was sentenced to 2 years imprisonment, while Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed, both 28, received 15 months. See Jonathan Brown, ‘Three Derby men jailed for anti-gay leaflets,’ The Independent, UK, Feb.15, 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/three-derby-men-jailed-for-anti-gay-leaflets-6720010.html

  41. 41.

    Paul Johnson, ‘“An Essentially Private Manifestation of Human Personality”: Constructions of Homosexuality in the European Court of Human Rights,” 10(1) Human Rights Law Review (2010): 67–97; Frances Hamilton, ‘The case for same-sex marriage before the European Court of Human Rights,’ 65(12) Journal of homosexuality (2018): 1582–1606.

  42. 42.

    Ibid.

  43. 43.

    E. Husserl and M. Heidegger, The phenomenology of internal time-consciousness, Bloomington: Indiana University Press; 1964; T. Kortooms et al., Phenomenology of time: Edmund Husserl’s analysis of time-consciousness, Vol. 161, Berlin: Springer, 2002.

  44. 44.

    We generally follow those who characterise the latter as generative phenomenology but want to avoid being side-tracked into intra-Husserlian debates. This is despite the risk of dogmatism that our evasion brings.

  45. 45.

    Phenomenology includes analyses of both generic species levels conceptions of normality and – as previously discussed – culturally relative aspects. At the level of perception and bodily experience operates as a general precondition of access to a coherent, unified and communicable perception of the world of nature and the life-world, which can be shared across cultures and different epochs because it is based upon our common species-specific sensory and kinaesthetic skills and possibilities. Without such commonalities, societal cooperation and communication within and across cultures would be impossible. Here we have to frankly accept that some conceptions of bodily ability and disability, normality and abnormality are linked to species specific material phenomenon; and are widely accepted as such. This explains why despite all other relativities few if any historical cultures have regarded hearing or visual impairments or children borne with missing limbs as either on a par or superior to those with more conventional bodily capabilities. Husserl, Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), Hua XXXIX, ed. By R. Sowa, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Springer, 2008: 657–58; and Husserl Ms. D 13.

    XII, 90. Far from providing an endorsement for disability related hate crime or speech, this point adds weight to the claims that societies have a positive – even absolute – obligation to take all reasonably practical steps to provide enhanced access for those recognised as having bodily disabilities to minimise the practical restrictive effects of physical disabilities upon the life-chances of those effected by them. In addition, phenomenology recognises how all manner of culturally variable and historically specific and changeable prejudices and discriminatory responses, which can include omissions as well as actions (e.g., refusal to install wheelchair access ramps), that serve to multiply the disempowering effects of bodily impairments are often superimposed upon the life-contexts of those with bodily impairments. Such practices, which may in a minority of cases be accompanied by hate speech, are not in any way grounded in – or justifiable by reference to – the material impairments themselves.

  46. 46.

    Husserl, Die Lebenswelt. Auslegungen der vorgegebenen Welt und ihrer Konstitution. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1916–1937), Hua. XXXIX, ed. By R. Sowa, Dordrecht/Boston/Lancaster: Springer, 2008: 640, 657–58.

  47. 47.

    A fully-developed and exhaustive Husserlian model of the interpretive preconditions for prejudice and its expression would need to draw upon and clarity the idea of “habituality” as this appears often implicitly at various levels of lived experience, especially perception, including those relating to subjective dispositions, bodily abilities, personal and sub-cultural convictions, value-judgments and attitudes. For Husserl, habitualities are extensive and pervasive appearing as not only individualised but also as intersubjective/social, as not only corporeal but also as emphatically cultural and sub-cultural. For an excellent analysis, see D. Moran ‘Edmund Husserl’s Phenomenology of Habituality and Habitus,’ 42(1) Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2011: 53–77, 61. More generally, see A. Pollard, ‘Explaining Actions with Habits’ 43 American Philosophical Quarterly, (2006): 57–68.

  48. 48.

    Husserl, 1970: 200.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lancashire Law School, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK

    Michael Salter & Kim McGuire

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  1. Michael Salter
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  2. Kim McGuire
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Salter, M., McGuire, K. (2020). The Natural Attitude’s Objectivism as a Type of Closure. In: The Lived Experience of Hate Crime. Contributions to Phenomenology, vol 111. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-33888-6_4

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