Introduction: Feminist Phenomenology, Medicine, Bioethics, and Health

Although by no means mainstream, phenomenological approaches to bioethics and philosophy of medicine are no longer novel (see, for example, Carel 2008; Carel 2011; Carel 2012; Carel 2013; Carel 2014; Carel 2016, Carel 2017; Leder 1990a; Leder 1990b; Leder 1992; Leder 2000; Leder and Greco 2014; Toombs 1988; Toombs 1992; Toombs 1993; Toombs 1995; Toombs 2001; Svenaeus 2000a; Svenaeus 2000b; Svenaeus 2001; Svenaeus 2013; Svenaeus 2014; Svenaeus 2018; Weiss 1999). Such approaches take the lived body (Leib)—as opposed to the body understood as a material, biological object (Körper)—as their point of departure to offer a more robust understanding of a plurality of experiences that go far beyond those surrounding disease or illness. Moreover, such approaches are invested in detailed examinations and articulations of a multitude of diverse subjective experiences, as opposed to reifying experience under the rubric of "the subject" or "the patient." To do this, phenomenologists have developed and applied the phenomenological method and made use of key phenomenological distinctions, analyses of the habitual body, and notions of motor intentionality and intentional arc, all in an attempt to capture the rich and fine-grained nature of the various experiences of illness, disease, and disability, but also health and well-being (see, for example, Carel 2014).

Phenomenological approaches have been applied in medicine, for example, by decreasing the gap between objective assessments of well-being in illness and the varied and diverse subjective experiences that are indicative of another, more personal and interpersonal dimension of well-being; helping to develop ways of conducting more nuanced dialogues between health care providers and patients based on a more robust and varied understanding of illness; developing phenomenologically informed research methods that go beyond existing qualitative methods and that are better able to capture lived experiences of illness, disability, and disease; and by providing medical staff with more concrete, patient-informed understandings of the broader impact of illness on the lifeworld of patients (Carel 2011). More specifically, phenomenological approaches to bioethics and medicine have engaged with topics such as pain, trauma, illness, death, and bodily alienation, to name just a few. Moreover, our understandings of these topics have benefitted from and are deepened by being analyzed using the tools of phenomenology.

There is also both a rich history and now a robust practice of approaching phenomenology from a feminist perspective (see, for example, Adams 2014; Ahmed 2006; Alcoff 1999; Alcoff 2000; Alcoff 2006; Al-Saji 2010; Bartky 1990; Bergoffen 2000; Beuavoir 1949; Dolezal 2015; Feder, 2014; Fisher 2000; Fisher 2010; Fisher and Embree 2000; Grosz 1994; Heinämaa 2012; Käll 2013; Kruks 2001; Lee 2014; Lundquist 2008; Oksala 2004: Oksala 2006; Shildrick 1999; Weiss 2006; Young 2005, Zeiler 2010; Zeiler 2013; Zeiler 2014). Combining these two approaches and methodologies has deepened our understandings of lived experiences of marginalization, invisibility, nonnormativity, and oppression, in particular, gendered oppression. Approaching phenomenology from a feminist perspective has also broadened the subject matter of traditional phenomenology to include analyses of sexuality, sex, sexual difference, gender, menstruation, breast cancer, pregnancy, birth, and miscarriage. Moreover, feminist phenomenological accounts of embodiment have also helped to broaden more traditional philosophical understandings and discussions of what singular bodies are and of how they navigate the world by intersectionally considering bodies as differently sexed, gendered, racialized, classed, aged, weighted, and abled. Feminist phenomenological accounts and analyses have helped to bring to the fore the complicated ways in which identities intersect and have argued that if we are really to understand first-person embodied accounts of experience, then a traditional phenomenological account of "the subject" not only does not suffice, but is so narrowly construed that it does not apply to any bodies that are not white, male, able-bodied, and cis-gender. In sum, feminist phenomenological approaches aim to dismantle what is generally considered to be universal and essential to human experience and to broaden our familiarity with and understanding of the scope, structures, and varieties of human experiences. In this vein, by showing that neglected areas of human experiences are not pathological but, rather, a part of the lives of women, the essays in this collection both problematize...