BSP Podcast

British Society for Phenomenology

This podcast is for the British Society for Phenomenology and showcases papers at our conferences and events, interviews and discussions on the topic of phenomenology.

  1. 1 DAY AGO

    The Solution Is in the Room: A Critical Phenomenology of Conflict Space

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Niclas Rautenberg of the University of Essex, UK   Abstract: Though the relevance of conflict is universally acknowledged in political theory, it rarely is investigated as a political phenomenon in its own right. Instead, philosophical approaches to conflict are end-state theories, i.e., oriented towards the desirable states of affairs after a conflict is mastered. Moreover, these theories do not fully appreciate the particularities of real conflict participants’ experiences and the way these factor in in formulating effective solutions to conflict. Attempting to provide a first step into remedying these shortcomings, this paper discusses the significance of the spatiality of conflict events. Drawing on qualitative interviews I conducted with political actors – politicians, officials, and activists – and on Martin Heidegger’s account of space in Being and Time, I will argue that conflict space, existentially understood as a space of action, is co-constituted by the respective conflict participants, as well as the location where the conflict unfolds. Understood this way, location and conflict parties’ (self-)understandings enable and constrain ways of seeing and acting. This includes to ‘see’ the solution(s) to a conflict. Yet, a purely transcendental phenomenology will remain oblivious to the quasi-transcendental, social structures that shape a person’s conflict experience. Actual conflicts do not take place behind a ‘veil of ignorance;’ their situation is not ‘ideal.’ Instead, conflict spaces, as any other political spaces, are spaces of power. Hence, to illuminate these facets of the phenomenon, phenomenology has to become critical. Combining insights from interviews with Black Lives Matter activists and Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s notion of misfit, I will argue that power shapes conflict space in three ways: who chooses the conflict location/who may enter it; who builds a conflict location/for whom is it built; and the agent-relative difference in scopes of possible actions and experiences afforded by the location. Taking conflict seriously, then, involves coming to grips with the where of conflict.   Biography: Niclas is a doctoral student at the University of Essex. His dissertation analyses philosophical approaches to political conflict. A particular emphasis rests on the phenomenology of conflict, appreciating the complexity and diversity of the phenomenon in modern polities. To this end, he conducts interviews with political actors. His interests include phenomenology (especially applied and critical), political and social philosophy. His research is funded by the German Academic Scholarship Foundation and the Consortium for the Arts and Humanities South-East England. He is also a research assistant at the interdisciplinary project ‘What does Artificial Intelligence Mean for the Future of Democratic Society?’   Further Information: This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    21 min
  2. 3 DAYS AGO

    Lived Experiences of Disability and Skill: A New Methodology in Philosophy of Action

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Abigail Moses of Durham University, UK     Abstract: his presentation describes an inclusive methodology I will be using in the future to account for the lived experiences of disabled people and the mundane skills they have formed from adapting to everyday social and environmental barriers. In both public thought and philosophy, those interested in understanding the concept of skilled action tend to focus on examples of elite skill, e.g., 'expert athletes'. (Gallagher et al 2019, Dreyfus 2014, Christensen 2019, Fridland 2014). If we ask what skilled action in disability looks like, we are pointed to examples of Paralympic athletes and wheelchair basketball (Edwards and McNamee 2015). However, I address an uncovered aspect in how we understand skilled action, by arguing that there is skill in everyday mundane tasks disabled people carry out in the face of barriers, such as navigating a wheelchair on a cobbled pavement. Although this research stems from reflecting upon my lived experiences of disability and skill, I do not solely include my own first-hand experiences. I will create workshops with 25 disabled individuals who are members of the charity Difference Northeast. They will be asked to scrutinise philosophical ideas about skill and consider the extent to which they fit with their lived experience of skilled action. Lived experiences that conflict with the philosophical conception of skilled action will be gathered and moulded into an inclusive account of skilled action that embodies these everyday mundane experiences. One of the aims of this presentation is to explain the motivation behind the practical workshops, as it arises from my characterization of mundane skill. This inclusive methodology is distinctive in that it aims to change public perceptions of disability and skill, whilst providing conceptual resources that can be used by those with lived experiences of disability to understand and articulate the ways that they are skilled.     Biography: Abigail Moses is a PhD student at Durham University, UK. Abigail’s research is at the intersection of Phenomenology of Illness and Philosophy of Action, focusing on lived experiences of disability and everyday skills gained from navigating social barriers. She conducts research for the charity Difference Northeast, which aims to change perceptions of disability. Her interest in these areas of philosophy is driven by a longstanding attentiveness to the lived experiences of those around her. This includes personal reflection upon her own disability and chronic illness, in the hope that she will be an authentic voice of intersectional representation in philosophy. Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    19 min
  3. 5 DAYS AGO

    Towards a vulnerability-based ethics

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Irene Breuer of Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany   Abstract: Our age is indeed the age of the refugee, the displaced person, mass immigration. Exile is "the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home“, as E. Said claims. But if true exile is a condition of terminal loss“ (E. Said) or of "a mutilated life“ (Th. W. Adorno) we have to ask ourselves what is here lost or mutilated: It is about the loss of attachment, not only to our roots, to our native place, to a community and to our collective identity, but to language and the possibility of a dialogue as well. But above all, it involves the very possibility of acknowledging the personhood or even the humanity not only of the other, but of ourselves. The vulnerable subject, in M. Fineman’s terms, i.e. the body-self, is the one whose being is broken, as E. Levinas states: Hence, a comprehension of the endangerment of the other is the basis for any vulnerability-based ethics, an ethics that should be both universal, constructing the disembodied ethical subject as a moral person, and particular, accounting for an embodied subject who is capable of responsibility and is open to love. Husserl's early ethics, while being both universal and particular and guided by reason, leaves crucial questions open, which I intend to develop with recourse on J. Butler, M.A. Fineman, A. MacIntyre and M.C. Nussbaum: 1) the full recognition of affectivity and vulnerability for ethical intersubjectivity, 2) the development of a material axiology. I contend that a proper recognition of our bodily vulnerability and of the concomitant absolute value of self-preservation involves both the development of a proper material axiology and the cultivation of emotions and virtues within a community bound by love, reason and the pursuit of happiness.   Biography: Degree in Architecture (1988) and in Philosophy (2003) from the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina. 2012: PhD in Philosophy from the Bergische University Wuppertal (BUW), Germany. 1988-2002: Lecturer, then Professor for Architectural Design and Theory at the UBA. 2012 to mid 2017: Lecturer for Theoretical Philosophy and Phenomenology at the BUW. 2019: DAAD scholarship, research on the reception of the German philosophical Anthropology in Argentina. Pesently working on mentioned research subject, with the support of the BUW.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    20 min
  4. 6 FEB

    The Impact of Trauma on Homeworld Experience

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Lillian Wilde of the University of York, UK   Abstract: The aim of this paper is to better understand the feeling of alienation in the aftermath of trauma. It is a feeling often described as not being at home in the world, the absence of a feeling of belonging not tied to specific individuals or groups. Husserl offers a concept that can aid us in capturing something important to this pervasive background feeling: the ‘homeworld’. The homeworld is constituted in contrast to an alienworld. It is experienced as ours rather than theirs. It is thus an inherently intersubjective concept that rests on the shared experience of possibilities and anticipations within one’s homeworldly horizon. Applying the homeworld concept to experiences of psychological trauma highlights the limitations of the notion. What we perceive as our world is messy, heterogenous, and in constant flux. The clear dichotomy between the home and alienworld that Husserl suggests does not capture the complexity of human experience; an alienworld may become familiar, and the homeworld may cease to feel like our own. I draw on work by Gerda Walther to develop a homeworld concept that allows for movement between and overlap of various homeworlds. I thereby develop a conceptual framework to describe the feeling of alienation in the aftermath of trauma in a more nuanced way. Trauma alters the individual’s sense of possibilities and anticipations. There are constraints on how far an experience can deviate from its normal anticipation-fulfilment structures and still be accommodated within our intersubjectively constituted homeworld. When an experience is too disruptive, the experience cannot be integrated within the homeworldly horizon: the individual no longer feels part of their homeworld and is expelled into a No-man’s-land. I suggest that this captures the sense of alienation common to post-traumatic experience.   Biography: I recently submitted my PhD on the phenomenology of post-traumatic experience with a focus on intersubjectivity at the University of York. My supervisors are Matthew Ratcliffe (philosophy) and Christina van der Feltz-Cornelis (psychiatry). I hold an MA in Philosophy from the University of Copenhagen.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    19 min
  5. 4 FEB

    Interpersonal relationships in depression: the depressed individual as a spectator

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Angelos Sofocleous of University of York, UK   Abstract: In the field of the phenomenology of depression, depressed individuals have reported feeling disconnected, isolated, incarcerated, detached and alienated from other people and the world. I argue that such descriptions of one’s experience of depression can be examined through understanding the depressed individual as a ‘non-participant spectator’ in the world.  I begin by examining the structure of interpersonal relationships and suggest that an interpersonal relationship is characterized by the following constitutive aspects: i) Reciprocity, ii) Interaffectivity, and iii) A sense of the other as a person. An interpersonal relationship involves turn-taking and, as such, is a reciprocal interaction in which agents respond to the other’s actions and behaviour. Additionally, such interactions are interaffective in nature as participants have the ability to ‘affect and be affected’. An interpersonal relationship also involves a sense of the other as a person - that is, as an individual who offers the possibility of engaging in contingent interactions, with whom one can interact in a reciprocal and interaffective manner. By focusing on the above three constitutive aspects of an interpersonal relationship, I describe how each of these is disturbed in depression, subsequently affecting the individual’s being-in-the-world. Due to these disturbances, depressed individuals describe themselves as inhabiting ‘another world’, being alienated, isolated, and incarcerated in the world, and also as experiencing a diminished sense of being-with other people.  Testimonies from depressed individuals demonstrate that the depressed individual feels that they adopt a third-person detached perspective toward the world and feels that they cannot actively participate in it. As the depressed individual cannot establish interpersonal relationships which are reciprocal, interaffective and which involve a sense of the other as a person, the world for them takes the form of a world being a world-for-others toward which they merely spectate.     Biography: I obtained a BA in Philosophy and Psychology and an MA in Philosophy from Durham University (UK). I am a 3rd-Year PhD Researcher in Philosophy at the University of York (UK), working on the philosophy of mental health, specifically on phenomenological experiences of depression, under the supervision of Prof Matthew Ratcliffe and Prof Keith Allen. My research focuses on first-person experiences of depression, especially on individuals' experience of the world as alienating, isolating, and incarcerating. I argue that such descriptions of one's experience of depression can be understood using the notion of being a 'non-participant spectator' in the world.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    22 min
  6. 2 FEB

    Broken rhythms: a walk, a wheelchair, and disability discoveries

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Adam Davidson of University of South Florida, United States   Abstract: I seek to bridge an experiential and representational chasm between people with significant disabilities and their caregivers by exploring the intercorporeal connections between my son and me on a walk through our neighborhood. Through the materiality of the wheelchair, I consider the embodied knowledge we share of the spaces we traverse and how the contours of those spaces shape our knowledge(s) of our bodies thereby informing my knowledge of disability as both a social construct inscribed on my son’s body and as a shared lived experience.  Starting with Merleau-Ponty’s conception of the body as the “point of view upon the world” and utilizing his notion of “flesh,” I reflect upon the connections and exchanges between our bodies and with the world of our walk, all mediated through the simple technology of the manual wheelchair. The rhythms and anticipations, the obstacles and mishaps, and the transformation of the visual all give rise to knowledge of the disabled body, disability experience, and of disabling structures in the world. Through my contact with him and his chair and with the world, I discover my own experiential connections to his experience of disability. This phenomenological reading of our walk recenters the body in discourse on disability that often locates disability in social structures and institutions and risks marginalizing the lived experience of people with significant impairments. This work also offers a counter-narrative that foregrounds the interdependence and intercorporeality of caregiving and disability experience and opens up new possibilities for representation. Finally, my account reinforces phenomenological connections between the disabled body and the technologies that support and facilitate life and movement in and with the world. I challenge conceptions of technology as the new, digital, or innovative and reinforce the everydayness of fleshly contact between bodies and a simple machine.   Biography: Adam is an adjunct faculty member in the Judy Genshaft Honors College at the University of South Florida (USF) and writer on disability issues and parenting. In 2020, he co-led a semester study abroad program for USF students to the University of Exeter. His educational and research background includes musical performance, popular music studies, cultural studies, and Christian theology. He teaches courses on knowledge and ethics, popular music, and walking and civic engagement. His current research interests include parenting and caregiving for children with significant disabilities, conceptions of fatherhood, and walking as a cultural and creative practice.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    19 min
  7. 28 JAN

    The Normate Body Schema and Assistive Technology: What Merleau-Ponty gets wrong about the "blind man’s cane"

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Rhona J. Flynn (University of Vienna, Austria) & Martin Huth (Messerli Research Institute, Vienna / Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Austria)   Abstract: This talk will highlight classical phenomenology’s epistemic and ethical pitfalls in how it conceives of disabled and non-normate embodiment. Because Merleau-Ponty uses non-normate bodies primarily as contrast foil he runs the risk of misrepresenting non-normate embodiment and reinforcing ableism. The famous example of the blind man’s cane illustrates this well: (1) In imagining blindness as mere lack of sight, rather than a “world-creating” form of embodiment (Reynolds, 2017), Merleau-Ponty gets blindness wrong. Although Merleau-Ponty’s broader account provides us with the means to theorize any form of embodiment as full-blown existence, in misrepresenting blindness, and failing to account for variegated forms of embodiment with particular, non-normate capabilities, he tacitly falls prey to ableism and oculocentrism. (2) The description of the white cane as being included in the body schema mistakes object annexation or extension for incorporation (Reynolds, 2018); this is the result of an imaginative failure by a sighted agent regarding how visually impaired people relate to the world, their own embodiment, and how they use assistive technology. (3) Merleau-Ponty underestimates the social world in which the visibility of assistive technology can expose the body to others as non-normate and, thus, to stigmatization. In omitting “the social dimensions of disabled experiences” (Shew, 2020), he misses important aspects of how disabled people relate to assistive technology precisely because of that sociality. These investigations serve as a starting point for a reconsideration of phenomenology’s potential for the analysis of disability. Imaginative failures can perpetuate ableist stereotypes about disability and lead to epistemic failures. A more plural understanding of the body as vehicle of our being toward the world will recognize the ableist underpinnings of classical phenomenology, and build on the perspectives and experiences of disabled people.   Biography: Rhona J. Flynn is prae-doc with the FWF-funded research group “The Limits of Imagination: Animals, Empathy, Anthropomorphism” at the Messerli Research Institute (Vienna), and a member of the Vienna Doctoral School of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Their current research brings into contact feminist epistemology, philosophy of mind, and critical disability theory, to consider whether empathy (or something like it) could be considered a social-epistemic practice.   Martin Huth has been graduated from the University of Vienna with a dissertation on biomedical ethics from a phenomenological perspective. Since 2008 he is a lecturer at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Until 2011 he has also been working with people with cognitive disabilities and mental illnesses. In 2011 he became a Post Doc at the Messerli Research Institute in Vienna. His research interests comprise theories of vulnerability, empathy, political theory, disability studies, biomedical ethics and animal ethics. Since 2021 he is PI of the third-party funded project The Limits of Imagination: Animals, Empathy, Anthropomorphism.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    19 min
  8. 26 JAN

    Memory, Modernity, and the Muslim Question

    Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.   This episode features a presentation from Riad Alarian of The University of Toledo, United States   Abstract: The deployment of nostalgia as a neutral term of expository proportions has become common in political discourse. The promise of objectively analyzing the persuasions and activities of modern subjects for whom the past is apparently important largely explains the term’s discursive appeal. But it is not clear that the political deployment of nostalgia can be “neutral” in the way users hope for at least three reasons: (1) because debates over the term’s exact meaning remain central in enduring tensions over the boundaries of “modernity,” (2) because the term typically functions, in practice, to offer a partisan diagnosis of others’ memoric standpoints, and (3) because the term’s use seems to encompass a particular imagination of the “modern self” and the “un-modern other.” This paper probes these contentions by interrogating recent discourses on so-called Muslim nostalgia. I focus on these discourses for the simple reason that we live today in the age of the Muslim question which, in the words of the political theorist Anne Norton, is a time when “the figure of the Muslim has become the axis where questions of political philosophy and political theology, politics and ethics meet.” I argue that the diagnosis of “Muslim nostalgia” presents one of the clearest expressions of the term’s pejorative deployment, and I claim, in conclusion, that this allegedly neutral use of the term is not only encumbered by a variety of political impressions about time, history, memory, and modernity, but also works to corroborate a certain story about the world and the nostalgic subject’s place in it. Such discursive deployments of nostalgia act not only to dismiss the nostalgic subject’s claims in and about the world, but also to affirm the epistemic regime of a provincial form of modernity—often in the endeavor to deny the desire for radical transformation.   Biography: Riad Alarian is a part-time lecturer in philosophy at the University of Toledo. He holds an MA in philosophy from the University of Toledo, an MSc in political theory from the University of Edinburgh, and a BA in philosophy from the George Washington University.     Further Information:   This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.   The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.   About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/   About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

    21 min

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This podcast is for the British Society for Phenomenology and showcases papers at our conferences and events, interviews and discussions on the topic of phenomenology.

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