Issues and Challenges in the Application of Husserlian Phenomenology to the Lived Experience of Hate Crime and Its Legal Aftermath

Abstract

The field of hate crime research addresses the presence, sources, and impact of particular types of expressions of prejudice, often perceived as particularly damaging and hurtful forms of interpersonal abuse and violence. There is the reflexive question of the possibilities of researchers themselves ever being able to adopt a truly “unprejudiced” approach to the presence of such damaging prejudices. Can this goal be realized without a researcher necessarily losing an experientially grounded understanding of what these meanings, values and purposes have come to mean, and how they are themselves interpretively reconstituted anew, including within the lived experience of victims, witnesses, police, prosecutors, judges, and victim support workers? A possible philosophically informed approach to the dilemmas posed by this topic is offered by Husserl’s phenomenology. This study critically explores the possibilities, reflective stages, and theoretical limitations of a sympathetically reconstructed Husserlian approach to hate crime. It argues that despite its manifest tensions, gaps, ambiguities, and internal contradictions, aspects of the Husserlian philosophical approach directed toward the different levels of experienced hate crime still retain the potential to both challenge and advance our understanding of this topic.