Cultural theorist Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use by analyzing what it means for bodies to be "oriented" in space and time.

"This is an original and refreshing use of phenomenological theory to address the kinds of questions--about orientations and about how bodies and objects become oriented through their interrelations--that help link it more directly to political and social questions--about gender, sexuality, and race, for example--that have tended to be treated as outside or beyond phenomenological frameworks. This extension and development of phenomenology is a major contribution."--Elizabeth Grosz, author of "The Nick of Time: Politics, Evolution, and the Untimely"