The concept of passivity in Husserl's phenomenology

Taking my cue from Husserl's account of time consciousness, which 'sublates' pairs of opposites such as form/content and constituting/constituted, I show that activity and passivity mutually determine one another. I explain in what way and to what extent passivity contributes to the constitution of phenomena as diverse as temporal syntheses, perceptual associations, memory fulfillment and cultural crises. Guided by the examples of affection, forgetting, habitus and translation, I identify three meanings of passivity: receptivity, inactuality and alienation. I conclude by discussing the relevance of passivity, in the sense of alienation, for cross-cultural communication.