The paper argues that the problem of ‘lived experience’ in The Cracked Mirror cannot be grasped phenomenologically but through the Derridian notion of supplement. The notion of supplement problematizes the coherence of phenomenological ego and makes it fractured and delayed. The Cracked Mirror therefore poses the ethical problem in representing the otherness of dalit experience for theoretical purpose. Present paper would try to resolve the problem of representation in The Cracked Mirror through Kant’s notion of ‘Reflective Judgment’ in Critique of (...) Judgment. Reflective judgment overcomes the logic of recognition as against the determinative judgment and opens up the possibility of the construction of the new concepts which can articulate the dalit experiences in social sciences. In this way, the present paper will try to resolve the dialectics between the singularity of the experience and the universality of judgment. (shrink)

In order to assess and understand human behavior, traditional approaches to experimental design incorporate testing tools that are often artificial and devoid of corporeal features. Whilst these offer experimental control in situations in which, methodologically, real behaviors cannot be examined, there is increasing evidence that responses given in these contextually deprived experiments fail to trigger genuine responses. This may result from a lack of consideration regarding the material makeup and associations connected with the fabric of experimental tools. In a two-year (...) collaboration, we began to experiment with the physicality of testing tools using the domain of moral psychology as a case study. This collaboration involved thinkering and prototyping methods that included direct contact and consideration of the materials involved in experimentation. Having explored the embodied nature of morality, we combined approaches from experimental psychology, moral philosophy, design thinking, and computer science to create a new testing tool for simulated moral behavior. Although the testing tool itself generated fruitful results, this paper considers the collaborative methodology through which it was produced as a route to highlight material questions within psychological research. (shrink)

The concept of lived experience plays a significant role in the social sciences in general and in philosophy in particular. The idea of lived experience as a social reality has been philosophized and given prime importance in the phenomenological tradition of philosophy. However, the work of Alfred Schutz, one of the phenomenologists on lived experience, has not been given adequate attention by either sociologists or philosophers. This paper attempts to understand how lived experiences are not merely individual or subjective experiences (...) but are also collective or social. Firstly, it suggests that lived experiences need to be understood in a broader context, namely that of the social and inter-subjectivity, which can be found in the Philosophy of Alfred Schutz. Thus, there is an attempt to show how Schutz’s philosophy broadly helps us understand lived experience as a social reality. Secondly, to justify how lived experiences are social and collective experiences, illustrations of the studies related to race, gender, and caste are given as a marker for lived experiences throughout the paper. So far, lived experience has been understood within the domain of individual or the subjective or merely in the first-person perspective. Hence, this paper provides some insights into investigating lived experience from the third-person perspective. (shrink)

Gopal Guru and Sundar Sarukkai, Experience, Caste and Everyday Social. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019, 257 pp., ₹1,100. ISBN: 9780199496051.