BSP Podcast

British Society for Phenomenology
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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.

  1. 22H AGO

    Doing Moral Phenomenology: Weaving in Reflexivity, Humility and Embodiment

    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 Supriya Subramani of University of Zurich, Switzerland   Abstract: In this paper, I illustrate how reflexivity, humility, and embodiment are integral to moral phenomenological research. While reflexivity and embodiment are widely acknowledged in qualitative inquiry and the phenomenological research process, these concepts are not critically examined within moral phenomenology. With the help of two ‘reflexive moments’ from the exploratory qualitative study which examines the moral experience of humiliation within Non-European migrants' healthcare experiences in Zurich, Switzerland, I will describe how reflexivity and embodiment are intertwined with humility. By doing this, I argue that researchers and participants share the intersubjective space where they engage with the emerging layered complex experiences. Furthermore, I illustrate that embodied humility provides space for mutual recognition of researchers and participants ‘moral self and Other’. Finally, I discuss how these complex intertwining layers, through the reflexive process, result in understanding moral experiences and moral judgments. Through this paper, I conclude and advocate for weaving in embodied humility and reflexivity while conducting moral phenomenological research, as it demystifies the moral and epistemological stances of the researcher and research process.   Biography: I am a Postdoctoral Fellow, and work on the philosophical and conceptual constructions of (dis)respect, humiliation and respect for persons within bioethics literature. My research interests lie at the intersection of moral emotions, ethics and behaviour. I employ qualitative methodology to explore moral subjectivities of individuals and engage with moral epistemological inquiries in my methodological research.     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/

    17 min

  2. 2D AGO

    Habitual affective intentionality: Theory and Critique

    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 Imke von Maur of Osnabrück University, Institute of Cognitive Science, Germany   Abstract: Theories of affective intentionality are concerned with the evaluative dimension of emotions. From this perspective, emotions can be seen as the ability to disclose meaningfulness. However, such theories too often neglect the social structuring of affectively disclosed content (for example, in Goldie 2001; Helm 2000; Roberts 2003). Theories within the paradigm of situated affectivity (cf. Stephan, Walter & Wilutzky 2014; Slaby 2014; Colombetti & Roberts 2015) which do consider socio-cultural factors often fail to acknowledge the meaning-making dimension of emotions because of their focus on emotion regulation. In this talk I combine theories of affective intentionality (cf. Slaby 2008; Slaby et al. 2011) with the paradigm of situated affectivity from a critical phenomenological (Ahmed 2010; Al-Saji 2014) and practice-theoretical perspective. On that basis I introduce the concept of “habitual affective intentionality”, which allows to address and, if necessary, to criticise the socio-cultural structuring of affectively disclosed content. I consider affective intentionality to be a bodily, phenomenally experienced way of disclosing complex meaningful Gestalts in and against the background of social practice. In this talk, I will especially spell out the ability to disclose meaningfulness by means of an emotion as the ability to “play along” (cf. Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty) with practice-relevant “games” and thus to maintain their validity. This raises the normative question of whether the practices and forms of living supported or disturbed by means of affective intetionality are justifiable or not. This orientation leads from the theoretical description of affective intentionality as an embodied and practical capacity to the normative and social theoretical perspective on the critical interrogation of consolidated emotional practices. It thus opens up the philosophy of emotions, which has so far mainly revolved around theoretical questions of affective intentionality, to questions of contemporary social philosophy and social critique.   Biography: I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the institute of cognitive science at Osnabrück University, Germany. I defended my PhD thesis in November 2017, which has been about the epistemic relevance of emotions in socio-culturally situated complex understanding processes. I have done research on emotions from a decidedly normative/political stance from the beginning of my studies and am now also working on a theory of education that is concerned with how to properly understand social matters in order to change them (climate change, structural racism, ethical issues concerning AI and technology, etc.).     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. 5D 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

  4. FEB 11

    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

  5. FEB 9

    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

  6. FEB 6

    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

  7. FEB 4

    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

  8. FEB 2

    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
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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.

Information

  • Creator
    British Society for Phenomenology
  • Years Active
    2016 - 2026
  • Episodes
    145
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Copyright 2020 All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    BSP Podcast