BSP podcast

#Society #Philosophy #British Society For Phenomenology #Annual Conference

28:52

Retailers are facing a rapidly evolving landscape where consumer expectations, AI advancements, and social media platforms like TikTok are redefining engagement. It feels like the holiday shopping season just ended, but when do retailers start planning for the next one, and some retailers already behind the curve for this season? Joining us today is Carey Cockrum, Director of Consulting at Cella by Randstad Digital, where she helps major brands and marketing teams optimize their strategies with data-driven insights, AI-powered content creation, and cutting-edge retail marketing trends. With the holidays just around the corner, she’s here to share what’s next for retail marketing, campaign optimization, and how brands can stay ahead in a hyper-competitive space. ABOUT CAREY COCKRUM Carey has been a part of the Creative Agency space for nearly 30 years. She has served as Designer, Creative Director, Creative Operations Lead and Agency Lead in both internal and external agencies (big and small). Carey has worked directly with C-suite stakeholders to understand organizational strategies that inform effective creative solutions. She is a bit of a data nerd and loves demonstrating results. Brands she’s supported include Fruit of the Loom, Wendy’s and Humana. In her free time, she enjoys going back to her creative roots through painting and drawing. She also spends her time improving upon the house she lives in today in Southern, MI - inside and out. RESOURCES Catch the future of e-commerce at eTail Boston, August 11-14, 2025. Register now: https://bit.ly/etailboston and use code PARTNER20 for 20% off for retailers and brands Don't Miss MAICON 2025, October 14-16 in Cleveland - the event bringing together the brights minds and leading voices in AI. Use Code AGILE150 for $150 off registration. Go here to register: https://bit.ly/agile150 Connect with Greg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregkihlstrom Don't miss a thing: get the latest episodes, sign up for our newsletter and more: https://www.theagilebrand.show Check out The Agile Brand Guide website with articles, insights, and Martechipedia, the wiki for marketing technology: https://www.agilebrandguide.com The Agile Brand podcast is brought to you by TEKsystems. Learn more here: https://www.teksystems.com/versionnextnow The Agile Brand is produced by Missing Link—a Latina-owned strategy-driven, creatively fueled production co-op. From ideation to creation, they craft human connections through intelligent, engaging and informative content. https://www.missinglink.company…

BSP Podcast

Series home•Feed

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.

100 episodes

BSP Podcast

updated about a year ago

Series home•Feed

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.

100 episodes

#Society #Philosophy #British Society For Phenomenology #Annual Conference

All episodes

BSP Podcast

1
Mariia Galkina - 'Towards a phenomenology of environmental shame' 21:41

44 weeks ago21:41

21:41

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Mariia Galkina, Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris. Mariia Galkina 'Towards a phenomenology of environmental shame' Abstract: This contribution aims to study the phenomenon of environmental shame and its role in awakening of ecological consciousness. It starts with the problem of asymmetry of human power that marks the current ecological transition. On the one hand, the growing ecological footprint testifies to excess of human power over the environment which leads to the sixth mass extinction and endangers planetary balance. On the other, facing ecological crisis, human, paradoxically, finds himself more powerless than ever. Powerless to slow down and to challenge his daily production and consumption practices by refusing to take their consequences into account. In a word, powerless to suspend his own power. One should ask then how to catalyze this suspension. My argument is to consider shame as such a feeling that turns an excess of human power over the environment into “potential-not-to”. Making use of this ontological concept developed by Agamben in order to think the negativity of human power that shame activates, the paper elaborates a phenomenology of “environmental shame”. Since suspending power requires to challenge its ethical justification by measuring the extent of its destructive consequences for other species, it is nothing but shame where freedom becomes aware of its murderous character that answers the need of self-limitation of human power over the environment. My concept of “environmental shame” develops Levinasian approach that defines shame as a discovery of injustified facticity of power and freedom, but rethinking it from the human relation to other endangered and vulnerable living beings. Shame, I argue, is a revolutionary feeling able to operate a conversion of environmental consciousness and transform our manner of being in the world by actualizing the “potential-not-to”, i.e. the negative potential that allows inoperativity of human power. Bio: Maria Galkina is a pre-thesis student in philosophy at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris (PSL). Her research interests cover phenomenology of emotions and environmental ethics. Her Master's thesis (2021, ENS-PSL) focused on the dialectic of negativity and creativity of shame, namely analyzing the works of Levinas, Agamben and Dostoevsky. Next year Maria starts her PhD thesis under the supervision of Dr. Marc Crépon (Archives Husserl Laboratory, ENS-PSL). thesis will propose a phenomenology of environmental shame making use of both phenomenological and psychological methods and mobilizing, among others, the conceptions of Levinas and Günther Anders. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Paul Tuppeny - '“I didn't want their past to be a mark on them.”(R. Rauschenberg): A Sculptor's Investigation into the Phenomena of Objective Age' 18:46

44 weeks ago18:46

18:46

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Paul Tuppeny, University of the Arts, London (Chelsea College of Art). Paul Tuppeny '“I didn't want their past to be a mark on them.”(R. Rauschenberg): A Sculptor's Investigation into the Phenomena of Objective Age' Abstract: It is in the nature of the world to be a place of constant change and transformation; trees grow, skin wrinkles and paint discolours. Every state of being is finite and all opportunity is fleeting. In his insistence that his 1951 White Paintings be regularly overpainted, the artist Robert Rauschenberg recognised how such ‘natural' processes of change not only generate affect in our interpretation of physical objects but, in doing so, can make us ‘feel' time. Intrinsic to the apparatus of perception are pre-cognitive judgements concerning the transformative processes that define our world and which we experience as ‘age'; through these perceptual intuitions, derived from momentary observations, we are able to ‘chronicle' the flux and stabilise our environment . The paper sets down hypotheses concerning the mechanisms that underlie age phenomena, developed through a doctoral research project pairing traditional literature-based research with the practice of sculpture, proposing routes by which these structures adjust meaning and generate affect. Convergent aspects of several phenomenological primary sources, including Aristotle, Husserl, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, are interwoven to illuminate our interaction with the material-temporality of the world. Throughout the research, this relationship is given physical expression through three-dimensional artworks. Central to our experience of age are the processes through which we assimilate the changing nature of entities (biographic mental object-files) around temporal-archetypes, the states in which objects carry greatest meaning, significance or use for us. Clearly an informed understanding of our experience of objective age is crucial not just for artists like Rauschenberg, but for anyone engaged with the physical world. Armed with a structured view of how age ‘moves' us we can progress toward being culturally comfortable with the phenomenon, both in ourselves and the things around us, leading to relationships within our society which displace damaging predispositions toward the young and the new. Bio: Formerly an architect, Paul Tuppeny completed his MA Fine Art in 2016, also receiving an award in the National Sculpture Prize that year. He was longlisted for The Ruskin Prize in 2017 and 2019 and has exhibited across the UK with outdoor venues including Broomhill and Cotswolds Sculpture Parks. Gallery exhibitions include Atkinson Gallery(Street), Sluice Art at Oxo Tower, Edge Gallery(Bath), ING Discerning Eye, Jubilee Library, Grand Parade Gallery(Brighton), and Murmuration Gallery and De La Warr Pavilion(Bexhill). Paul was invited to join the Royal Society of Sculptors in 2017 and is currently researching his PhD at Chelsea College of Art(UAL). This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Adam Takacs - 'Ageing Being: Temporality, Corporeality, and Shared World' 21:32

44 weeks ago21:32

21:32

Season 6 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 Takacs, Eötvös Loránd University Budapest. Adam Takacs 'Ageing Being: Temporality, Corporeality, and Shared World' Abstract: “The objective world is incapable of sustaining time”, writes Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception, and almost the entire phenomenological tradition seems to echo this thesis from Husserl to Heidegger and beyond. Besides the fact that this claim appears to be at odds with the findings of historical science, and archaeology in particular, it also blocks the way to explore a phenomenological possibility. The possibility of looking at the experience of temporality not in terms of ecstatic subjectivity, but in terms of material and corporeal ageing. This paper sets out to develop two arguments: 1) The first is that the phenomenon of “ageing” – taken as a synonym of temporal change or becoming – can be meaningfully presented in a phenomenological framework as a general ontological condition that is shared by all material and corporeal beings, including the human subject. 2) The second is that the manifestation of the shared nature of ageing can reveal implications for a new phenomenological understanding of already familiar experiential qualities. I will argue that the experience of growing old with things and with the material environment disclose a disposition that informs a common horizon of memory, empathy, and corporeality. Bio: Adam Takács is Senior Lecturer in philosophy and humanities at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, and currently Visiting Professor at the University of Alberta, Canada (2021-2023). His publications include Le fondement selon Husserl (Paris, 2014), Traces de l'Etre. Heidegger en France et en Hongrie (Paris, 2016), and more recently “Time and Matter: Historicity, Facticity and the Question of Phenomenological Realism”, Human Studies (vol. 41, no. 4: 661-676.). This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Gage Krause - 'Desynchronization, Alienation, and the Social World in Grief' 20:17

47 weeks ago20:17

20:17

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Gage Krause, Fordham University. Gage Krause 'Desynchronization, Alienation, and the Social World in Grief' Abstract: Recent phenomenological approaches to grief have, understandably, focused primarily on the relationship between the griever and the deceased, describing grief as an experience of different kinds of losses and as a transformation of various structures of subjectivity. In addition to the griever-deceased relationship, phenomenologists have even more recently begun to attend to the cultural and social aspects of grief (e.g. Køster and Kofod 2021). However, phenomenologists have yet to provide a thorough examination of the social dynamics and the sense of social isolation and alienation that can appear in grief. In order to address these issues, this paper will clarify the interplay of temporality and sociality in grief. Building on Thomas Fuchs' account of ‘contemporality', I argue that grief involves a desynchronization between the griever and their social world, which diminishes the griever's sense of belonging with and ability to relate to non-grieving others. Further, I argue that a griever's implicit or explicit awareness of their desynchronization from the social world accounts for the sense of alienation and estrangement often experienced when engaging in daily routines, projects, and social interactions. That is, the transformations in temporality in grief also involves an awareness that the griever temporally inhabits the world differently than others, causing the griever to experience once-familiar activities and social engagements as alien and strange. To make this argument, this paper will draw on literary-autobiographical accounts, namely Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Notes on Grief, Denise Riley's Time Lived, Without Its Flow, and C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, with a focus on their descriptions of social interaction, performing daily routines, and self-understanding. Attending to these intertwined temporal and social aspects will provide a clearer understanding of how grievers renegotiate their relationship to their social world in the wake of their loss. Bio: Gage Krause is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Fordham University. His research focuses primarily on Phenomenology and Social & Political philosophy, working at the intersection of Critical Phenomenology, Phenomenological Psychopathology, and Philosophy of Disability. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Ronja Griep - 'When Does Bodily Shame Turn Unjust? The Case of Menstrual Shame' 19:35

48 weeks ago19:35

19:35

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Ronja Griep, University of Cambridge. Ronja Griep 'When Does Bodily Shame Turn Unjust? The Case of Menstrual Shame' Abstract: A concern with menstrual shame has occupied policymakers, educators, and charity workers abroad for decades (ActionAid 2021, Amnesty International 2019). Increasingly, the ‘fight against period shame' has been discussed within the UK, amid news of the Scottish government scrapping the ‘tampon tax' and the award of an MBE to Amika George for her activism in offering free period products in schools (BBC 2021). What is it that troubles many about menstrual shame? What exactly are activists fighting against? I argue that these questions are best answered by attending closely to the phenomenology of menstrual shaming - this phenomenology not only reveals menstrual shaming to be insidious, but to constitute an injustice. I argue, drawing on Iris Marion Young and Julia Kristeva, that menstrual shaming takes place mainly at the level of habits and unconscious behaviour in everyday social spaces. It reaches all corners of life - from personal to interpersonal and institutional. The phenomenology itself plays a crucial part in discovering just what the injustice consists in: I argue that habit-formation influenced by shame and institutional failures, as I highlighted, leads to women's self-respect being undermined before they even begin to engage in projects. It undermines their self-respect at early yet important stages of women's lives, while remaining often invisible and highly normalised. This account of injustice arising from the phenomenology of menstrual shaming, I conclude, gives us important insights into which other forms of bodily shaming constitute injustice and why they do so. This allows me to answer one of the most powerful objections to my argument, namely that we all conduct certain bodily needs in private and would be ashamed if discovered, yet do not think of this as an injustice. The specific phenomenology of menstrual shame, I contend, allows us to differentiate different forms of bodily shaming. Bio: Ronja Griep is a PhD Student in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge. Her research focusses on menstrual shaming, starting from its phenomenology to its status as an injustice and ending with thoughts on possible empowerment. She is especially interested in FemTech's promise to ‘empower' women from menstrual shame, e.g. by offering them to track their periods. Her research is funded by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship Programme and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This recording was taken from our recent conference . The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Oskar Otto Frohn - 'Shame and Depression – A Phenomenological Qualitative Exploration of Shame in Depression' 21:29

48 weeks ago21:29

21:29

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Oskar Otto Frohn. Oskar Otto Frohn - 'Shame and Depression – A Phenomenological Qualitative Exploration of Shame in Depression' Abstract: The individual suffering from depression is prone and susceptible to normative, precise, rigid ways of being, and expectations in social and societal spheres induce exceptional strong feelings of obligation towards oneself, others, and society – as though they are constantly in debt and owe something of value. Ways of how one ought to be and act quickly becomes performative tasks for the person with depression, and failing to perform or falling short of their self-established duties in social interactions, even when alone, evoke feelings of existential shame. Taking the shape of something irrevocable, and becomes part of the individual’s essence, a character trait, or even a state of being, a shame for existing. Shame, then, is an integral part of depression and the lived experience. Therefore, based upon phenomenological qualitative interviews of people with depression, I argue in this talk, firstly, that the shame of not living up to self-imposed, rigid, specific normative ways of being drastically affect the lifeworld of the person with depression with a hypersensitivity, where otherwise local affordances has become global, threatening the ‘I’ in relation to itself – representing ways in which to either prove or disprove an identity, which potentially leads to what Thomas Fuchs (2013) calls the corporealization of the lived body, as a means to protect the ‘I’. Secondly, shame shows how people with depression, unlike commonly considered, live rich inner social lives. And although shame is a, seemingly, overly negative emotion, it also points towards meaningful personal relations with others, and just how valuable these are to people with depression, and how extremely hyperaware they are of the social dimension, even if they withdraw themselves. Bio: Oskar Otto Frohn graduated as an undergraduate in philosophy from University of Copenhagen, and recently obtained a M.A from KU Leuven. He has worked with and researched depression for almost four years as a scientific assistant in philosophy and has focused primarily on phenomenology of psychopathology and first-person lived experience in his master’s programme. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Emily Hughes - '"Heavier, and less mine": grief and the modification of bodily experience' 18:05

48 weeks ago18:05

18:05

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Emily Hughes, University of York. Emily Hughes '"Heavier, and less mine": grief and the modification of bodily experience' Abstract: This paper gives a phenomenological analysis of the impact of grief upon bodily experience. In the first half of the paper I will provide an analysis of responses to Question 7 of the ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience' questionnaire, ‘Has your body felt any different during grief?' which was conducted with colleagues from the University of York. Using Braun and Clarke's qualitative method of thematic analysis, I will organise the descriptions of bodily experience into patterns of themes, including feelings of heaviness, emptiness, constriction, numbness and depersonalisation. In the second half of the paper I will critically evaluate these themes in light of the broader literature on the lived body and lived space, as given in the work of Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Marcel, Minkowski, Bollnow and Schmitz. In so doing, I will explore the ways in which modifications to bodily experience in grief can be seen to impact spatial experience and, by implication, the way in which the mourner finds themselves in the world as a whole. Bio: I am a postdoctoral research associate in philosophy at the University of York working on the AHRC-funded project ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience.' I completed my PhD at the University of New South Wales. My research is situated in the intersection between existential phenomenology and the philosophy of psychiatry and psychology, with a particular focus on phenomenological interpretations of affect and the way in which emotions modify temporal experience. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Pat McConville - 'Phenomenology and Artificial Hearts: Three scales of temporal change' 16:48

48 weeks ago16:48

16:48

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Pat McConville, Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University. Pat McConville 'Phenomenology and Artificial Hearts: Three scales of temporal change' Abstract: Heart failure is a widespread and increasingly common disease. Its symptoms can be dramatic and debilitating. Serious heart failure is also incurable and represents a clear example of the kinds of serious illness and disability discussed by phenomenologists of health and illness. The gold standard treatment for end-stage heart failure is heart transplant. Increasingly, however, patients are offered artificial hearts – either Ventricular Assist Devices (VADs) or Total Artificial Hearts (TAHs) – as either a bridge-to-transplant or as a final or “destination therapy”. Artificial hearts supplement or replace the organic heart and perform the heart's blood-pumping function, or what might be described as in Albert Borgmann's “device paradigm” as the commodity of circulation. However, while they can provide this life-saving function, artificial hearts also generate both obvious and subtle phenomenological changes in their bearers. Incorporating a mechanical heart with both interior and exterior features is challenging. Artificial hearts produce and draw attention to new representations of otherwise felt or interocepted visceral states, and might interrupt pre-device motor intentionalities. Devices detach circulation from ordinary cardiac rhythms, while machine routines mark out new temporalities. In this paper, I introduce artificial hearts and why phenomenology is useful for considering them, then focus in on the three scales – short-, medium-, and long-term – of temporal change they may generate. Bio: Pat McConville is a doctoral candidate in philosophical bioethics at the Monash Bioethics Centre, Monash University, Australia. He principally draws on the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty to explore the phenomenology of medical devices, particularly artificial hearts. He has also published on phenomenology and congenital illness, phenomenology and reverse triage, and phenomenology and the aesthetics of the early arcade game Asteroids. This recording was taken from our recent conference . The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Penelope Lusk - '“It said the quiet part out loud”: Reshaping Shame in the #MedBikini Twitter Movement' 20:01

48 weeks ago20:01

20:01

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Penelope Lusk, University of Pennsylvania. Penelope Lusk '“It said the quiet part out loud”: Reshaping Shame in the #MedBikini Twitter Movement' Abstract: Becoming-a-physician through medical education is a process often mediated by shame (Bynum); that shame is not always as explicit or discriminatory as in July 2020, when the Journal of Vascular Surgery published an article classifying surgery trainee social media posts as either ‘professional' or ‘unprofessional.' Considered unprofessional: controversial social or political comments, and “inappropriate” attire including bikinis and swimwear. The article was interpreted as explicit shaming of gendered bodies within the profession and met backlash in the form of a Twitter campaign in which healthcare workers posted their bikini pictures with the hashtag #MedBikini. Here, I analyse Twitter discourse and popular coverage of #MedBikini as a surface reworking of the affective economy in medical training and suggest potential phenomenological implications of this shift (Ahmed). The Vascular Surgery article made the nature of medical professional discipline visible, as it utilized surveillance and classification to manifest power and encourage normalization—and attempted to circulate shame among trainees. However, participants in #MedBikini re-signified bikinis (and their gendered and racialized bodies) as not-shameful, but valuable and resistant to dominant norms. Simultaneously, the #MedBikini movement highlights how racialized attire (hijab) and racialized bodies continue to be attached to negative feelings in the profession, complicating the potential meaning of the response as a social movement. Phenomenologically, the signification of bodies has potential impact on the experience of being- or becoming-a-physician. The revaluing of bodies within medical training reassigns group notions of shame and pride, reflecting Sedgwick's notion of shame as a mobile and identity-producing emotion. The reshaping of the affective economy at the discursive level highlights the potential role of ‘affective activism' in forming the power dynamics of medical training and the profession. That potential can be fulfilled when discourse translates into political and institutional responses which manifest change in the embodied experience of medical training. Bio: Penelope Lusk is a doctoral student in Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. She was a 2020-2021 Fulbright student fellow at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research interests are focused on healthcare and professional education, affect theory, critical theory and philosophy. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Janna van Grunsven - 'Reimagining Embodied Well-Being: Quasi-Cartesianism, Crip Technoscience & 4E Cognition' 24:05

49 weeks ago24:05

24:05

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Janna van Grunsven, Delft University of Technology. Janna van Grunsven 'Reimagining Embodied Well-Being: Quasi-Cartesianism, Crip Technoscience & 4E Cognition' Abstract: The aim of my paper is to show that insights from the field of embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition can be used to articulate a more inclusive socio-technical imaginary of human well-being. I borrow the notion of a socio-technical imaginary from Jasanoff and Kim (2015), who define socio-technical imaginaries as “collectively held, institutionally stabilized, and publicly performed visions of desirable futures, animated by shared understandings of forms of social life and social order attainable through, and supportive of, advances in science and technology.” I begin by arguing that a quasi-Cartesian conception of the mind and the body currently shape our sociotechnical imagination, informing widely held ideas of: what minds and bodies are what well-functioning minds and bodies look like & what it means to design technologies that purport to support, augment, cure, and rehabilitate minds and bodies that deviate from the widely shared view of properly functioning bodies and minds. I will discuss how developments in Crip Technoscience allow us to interrogate and critique this quasi-Cartesian socio-technical imaginary. I will then propose that these Crip Technoscientific insights can be bolstered with insights from the field of embodied, embedded, extended and enactive cognition, also known as 4E Cognition. After I discuss how 4E offers an alternative take on ideas 1-3, listed above, I offer a tentative sketch of a more inclusive sociotechnical imaginary centered around Crip Technoscientific and 4E insights. Bio: Janna van Grunsven is an assistant professor in philosophy of technology at TU Delft and a research fellow in the NWO-Gravitation research programme “The Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies”. Van Grunsven's work combines insights from philosophy of technology and the field of 4E cognition and examines how different theoretical accounts of the mind and different technological developments can have decisive ethical implications for how disabled people are brought in view in a moral sense. Her work has appeared in journals such as Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Topoi, the Journal of Consciousness Studies, and Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Michael Greer - 'On Oscillating Between Fatness and Thinness in a Fatphobic World: Weight-Cycling, Apprehensive Perception, and the Body You Might Have' 24:25

49 weeks ago24:25

24:25

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Michael Greer, The Graduate Center, CUNY. Michael Greer 'On Oscillating Between Fatness and Thinness in a Fatphobic World: Weight-Cycling, Apprehensive Perception, and the Body You Might Have' Abstract: Content note: diet culture, eating disorders, fatphobia Diets ostensibly function as reactions against and prophylaxis from “excess” body weight. However, diets rarely affect long term weight-loss. “Weight-cycling” (sometimes called “yo-yo dieting”) describes the phenomenon of losing weight and gaining it (and often more) back in repetitive cycles as a result of dieting behavior(s). The paradigmatic experience of what I call being a “weight-cycler” is therefore that of oscillation between being fat and being relatively thin(ner) in a fatphobic society. A phenomenological analysis of this experience of weight-cycling is missing from the interdisciplinary literature of Fat Studies. Using tools developed within the canon of critical phenomenology, which has historical roots in Merleau-Pontian, Sartrean, and Beauvoirian existential phenomenology, I fill this gap. Weight-cyclers commonly experience disordered relationships with their own bodies and the things that sustain it: food and exercise. I examine weight-cyclers' troubled relationships with food, exercise, and their bodies, alongside their oscillation between different body-sizes, to argue that the phenomenology of the weight-cycler creates the conditions for an “apprehensive perception” towards the futurity of their own embodied selves. This feeds into further weight-cycling. I contend that part of the weight-cycler's difficulty is that they focus on the body they “might have” instead of the body as lived. Bio: I am a white cis-woman PhD student in Philosophy at CUNY. Broadly speaking, I work in moral and social philosophy. More narrowly, my projects typically involve questions at the intersections of feminist philosophy, existential phenomenology, bioethics, social epistemology, philosophy of language, and fat studies. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Bence Marosan - 'Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Animal Emotions. A Husserlian Perspective' 21:41

50 weeks ago21:41

21:41

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Bence Marosan, Budapest Business School. Pazmany Peter Catholic University. Bence Marosan 'Towards a Phenomenological Theory of Animal Emotions. A Husserlian Perspective' Abstract: Edmund Husserl and other classical authors of phenomenology (such as Heidegger, Scheler, Plessner, and others) considered the problem of animal being a particularly important topic. As far as I know, however, none of these authors (including Husserl) devoted special attention to the problem of animal emotions. In this conference presentation, I would like to sketch out a phenomenological theory of animal emotional life from a Husserlian perspective. Just as the phenomenological study of emotion has contributed to understanding the essence of consciousness, it is my contention that the study of animal consciousness can similarly offer crucial insights. Both of these subjects help us to examine certain crucial features of consciousness in a sharper light. Animal consciousness represents a more elementary level of consciousness. Emotions, in turn, play a fundamental role in organizing conscious life; they underlie our goals, they also disclose the world in a fundamental way. In these respects, I believe that a better understanding of animal emotions could serve research on consciousness in general. In this presentation, I take Husserl's theory of emotions, as presented in his unpublished work, “Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins”, as a point of departure, and I apply this conception to the case of animals. In Husserl's work, there are three principle levels of affectivity and emotion: feeling-sensations, “moods” or “dispositions”, and acts of feeling and emotion. I show that this schema is applicable to various kinds of animal consciousness, since wherever animal consciousness is concerned there are, at the very least, minimal (feeling-sensations) present. On this point, I also engage with contemporary scientific and neuroscientific research – especially the works of Jaak Panksepp. This makes it possible to explore how, while mammals have a quite rich and sophisticated emotional life, even insects might plausibly have certain elementary feelings (Perry, Baciadonna, & Chittka 2016). Bio: Name: Bence Peter MAROSAN Date of Birth: 01. 04. 1978. Place of Birth: Budapest, HUNGARY BA and MA Studies: Philosophy, Theory of Arts and Media. Institute: Eötvös Loránd University PhD Studies: Philosophy, Phenomenology. Institutes: Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary). Affiliation: Budapest Business School, Pázmány Péter Catholic University More important international publications: 1) “Levels of the Absolute in Husserl”. In Continental Philosophy Review. 2021. 2) “Husserl on Minimal Mind and the Origins of Consciousness in the Natural World”. In Husserl Studies. 2021. Research interests: Phenomenology (Husserl in particular), Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Mind, Political Philosophy, Eco-ethics, Eco-politics This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Joe MacDonagh - 'Daseinic elements of the ethicality of nursing practice' 19:03

50 weeks ago19:03

19:03

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Joe MacDonagh, Technological University Dublin. Joe MacDonagh 'Daseinic elements of the ethicality of nursing practice' Abstract: This paper will examine the ethical basis of nursing using the prism of Heidegger's idea of dasein. It will look at how, in the nursing ‘moment' between a nurse and their patient, a nurse is called upon to be ethically responsive to the patient in a manner that engages in a dialogue with all those nurses who have provided care theretofore, are currently doing so and who will do so in the future. In direct patient care a nurse is responding to the ‘other' in front of her, with their specific personhood and needs, but also to the generalised other person who may fall into one or more disease categories. This toggling between a specific and generalised patient ‘other' presents dilemmas for nurses of how to shape care that attends to the needs of that individual patient while observing care guidelines and professional ethical precepts that are required by hospitals and professional nursing bodies. Data will be presented from interviews with nurses and from field notes observing nursing practice to substantiate the above and to show how nursing practice is not simply the observance of set and invariant modes of activity. Rather, nurses have to navigate the needs of: their professional training, their empathy with an often empained patient other, the changing expectations of those receiving care, the embodiedness of the other and their own embodiedness as well as supporting the patient to wellness, a less empained existence or through palliation to death. An understanding of nursing will be presented in which hermeneusis is suggested as a central part of nursing practice, wherein nurses- acting ethically- continually interpret the needs of their patients in providing the most appropriate care, against the backdrop of a constantly shifting personally and professionally accumulated knowledge of their role in providing care. Bio: Dr Joe MacDonagh is a Chartered Psychologist and a member of the research ethics boards of two acute hospitals in Dublin, Ireland. He is also a member of the Life and Medical Sciences committee of the Royal Irish Academy. He has a particular interest in bioethics, and has been involved in the organisation of seminars and webinars on this area. Finally, he is a former Honorary Secretary of the History and Philosophy of Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Tristan Hedges - 'Towards a phenomenology of discrimination' 22:51

50 weeks ago22:51

22:51

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Tristan Hedges, University of Copenhagen. Tristan Hedges 'Towards a phenomenology of discrimination' Abstract: As I walk down the corridor, I barely slow my pace, extend my arm, and am then thrown by the wholly unanticipated experience of my body crashing into the unbudging door. I typified the door as a ‘push-door' and approached it with the presupposition that my expectation of it opening upon being pushed would be fulfilled. I argue that this all-too-familiar experience illuminates a tendency toward concordance which underlies the most pernicious and unintentional discriminatory practices. Concordance, understood as the cohering of experience with one's expectations, provides us with a sense of normality which is fundamental for epistemic, normative, and doxic familiarity. In this talk, I bring Husserl's phenomenological understanding of concordance-normality into dialogue with social scientific and philosophical work on discrimination. Historically, phenomenology has concerned itself with the lived experience of the discriminatee. However, it is also well-equipped for thematising the ways in which we discriminate at the pre-reflective levels of perceptual experience and bodily being. Discriminatory practices manifest in the unintended turning of heads, prolonged looks, or prejudicial ways of seeing and hearing. Drawing on examples of stereotyping, cognitive biases, and spatial exclusion, I show how discrimination is often a naïve, normalising attempt to stabilise concordance at the expense of new, revised, and dialogically established ways of seeing. To these ends, I begin with Husserl's understanding of normality and its constitutional significance for our typifying experience of the world. I then illuminate the attitudinal character of discrimination and argue that there is a normalising tendency toward concordance underlying discriminatory practices. Lastly, I want to problematise this tendency toward concordance by arguing for the normative, epistemic, and experiential richness of discordance. Despite their disorientating and unfamiliar character, discordant experiences allow us to revise, critically reflect on, and expand our horizons of expectation. Bio: Tristan Hedges is a PhD fellow at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He is working under Dan Zahavi as part of the Who Are We research project, for which he is exmaning the phenomenological notion of we-identity. Within this context his research is interested in the Us/Them dichotomy, and how we-identities can be antagonistic and exclusionary, but also provide senses of belonging and political solidarity. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Knowles & Melo Lopes - 'How to Dress Like a Feminist' 25:53

50 weeks ago25:53

25:53

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Charlotte Knowles, University of Groningen and Filipa Melo Lopes, University of Edinburgh. Knowles & Melo Lopes - 'How to Dress Like a Feminist' Abstract: From Mary Wollstonecraft to Sandra Bartky, feminist philosophers have historically denounced women’s attention to clothes as a form of complicity with patriarchal hierarchy. Through self-objectifying and laborious forms of dress, women constitute themselves as passive objects, rather than active subjects. The key to liberation, then, has been said to lie in ‘opting out’ of care for one’s appearance. However, this strategy problematically dismisses the pleasure and the sense of creative self-fashioning that women experience in selecting, wearing, and making clothes. Feminist philosophers face therefore an impasse: either we acknowledge the oppressive function of clothes, but risk ignoring women’s lived experience; or we recognise the genuine pleasure and expressive freedom derived from clothes but undermine our ability to critique them. What then, if anything, can we say about what it is to ‘dress well’, in an ethical sense, in a patriarchal society? To answer this question, we adopt a phenomenological perspective, focussing on the relational, dynamic and embodied nature of meaning. We argue that the meaning of clothes is never entirely fixed and that they sit within a relational whole of significations (a ‘world’). Therefore, complicity with gender hierarchy is not a matter of what one wears, but primarily of how one wears it: of one’s relation to clothing and to the world. We develop a phenomenological account of Effortless Dressing that seeks to do justice to feminist critiques, whilst also recognising the pleasure and possibilities that can be found in practices of dressing. We argue ‘effortlessness’ involves: 1) a recognition that clothes have meaning, but that this meaning is not entirely fixed, 2) a critical awareness of the social scripts around dressing, and 3) a relation to clothes that values them for how they enable us to do things in the world, rather than as ends in themselves. Bio: Charlotte Knowles is an Assistant Professor in Ethics, Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Groningen. Her primary research areas lie in feminist philosophy and phenomenology, particularly Heidegger and Beauvoir. These interests come together in her work on complicity where she explores issues of freedom, responsibility, agency and oppression from a phenomenological perspective, in order to examine why women sometimes reinforce or uphold their own subordination. Filipa Melo Lopes is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where she researches feminist politics, sexual ethics, social philosophy, and the philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir. Her recent publications include Beauvoirian analyses of incel violence and the #Metoo movement. This recording was taken from our recent conference . The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Pritchard & Tovey - 'Ecophenomenological Perspectives on Human Augmentation' 21:56

50 weeks ago21:56

21:56

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Matthew Pritchard, University of Oxford and Phil Tovey, Independent UK. Pritchard & Tovey - 'Ecophenomenological Perspectives on Human Augmentation' Abstract: Just as the Anthropocene marked a geological epoch that, for the first time, would be attributed to actions according of a single species, Homo Sapiens is on the precipice of another epochal transition through Human Augmentation (HA) whereby, through technological alteration, a single species is decoupling its own evolutionary trajectory from that of its natural environment. Through HA we should anticipate major disturbances concerning the classification of what it is to be human- taxonomically, socially and importantly, phenomenologically – owing to the intrinsic relational basis of our evolutionary-biological models with nature and their effects on perceptions of selfhood. By extension, this affects what it is to be a non-human and therefore has important ethical implications beyond an anthropocentric purview, to a more-than-human world whose only opportunity for augmentation arises in tight ecological symbiosis with its natural ecosystem. HA therefore represent a sociotechnical pivot point whereby the construct human is existentially disrupted through assimilation with either the purely machinic (i.e., Cyborgs) or the animalistic (i.e., Chimeras) both leading to what we coin as ‘ecophenomenological self-disruption’. We highlight HA’s self-disruptive potentiality through re-examining Wood’s (2001) rich dimensions of ecophenomenology - the plexity of time and the boundaries of thinghood – to reveal how these technological augmentations in our physiological structures (including our sensory modalities) threaten to either entrench ontological anthropocentrism or offer a promising opportunity to transition away from it towards ecocentrism. Bio: Dr Matt Pritchard is Visitor to the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford University. He has BA and MPhil degrees in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University and a DPhil in Embodied Cognition and Religious Naturalism from Oxford. He was Co-Chair of the Civil Service Environment Network for 2021/22 and is on the Government Office for Science's Expert Advisory Group for Resilience. Philip Tovey is the Head of Futures in the public sector organisation. He holds a MSc by Res in Policing from Canterbury Christ Church University and his research focuses on the cognitive phenomenology of time and futurity. Phil is a strategic partner of the University of Bristol’s ESRC Centre for Sociodigital Futures, whereby he focused on interdisciplinary research to address environmental issues of strategic importance to the UK. This recording was taken from our recent conference . The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Maxim Miroshnichenko - 'The Painful Incorporation: Hybrid Intercorporeality in the Case of Dialysis and Chronic Kidney Disease' 22:14

51 weeks ago22:14

22:14

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Maxim Miroshnichenko, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University. Maxim Miroshnichenko 'The Painful Incorporation: Hybrid Intercorporeality in the Case of Dialysis and Chronic Kidney Disease' Abstract: I am going to collide two approaches to technology in disability and chronic kidney disease: extension and incorporation. For the 4EA view, the metabolically considered living systems can include resources and processes beyond their bodies. The individual enacts autonomous self-monitoring, control of internal regulation, and exchanges. This ‘hybrid intercorporeality' exists with graded norms of vitality – health, sickness, stress, and fatigue. It is an incorporation that affords the individual to enact her sense-making through the integration of technologies, artifacts, and prostheses into her body schema. This view emphasizes the body-as-subject, in contrast to the extended cognition thesis characterized by the tendency to objectify the body. The central problem of this approach is its view of incorporation as fruitful and enabling. I want to concentrate on the case of dialysis in chronic kidney disease as painful and discomforting integration of technology. This shows the intertwinement of the lived body and biomedical body-as-object. Dialysis is prescribed for persons with end-stage renal disease (ESRD) – kidney failure. The patient needs to rid her blood from toxins. This leads to the need for a regular course of long-term dialysis accomplished with an artificial kidney–dialysis machine. Based on the phenomenological interviews with the patients going through dialysis, I will analyze their view of technology as a life-supporting machine and a trap. The patients feel disgust and abjection towards the body due to the aggressive and painful presence of equipment – tubes and needles, fluid filling the body, changes in body shape and weight, nausea and fatigue, immobility, and limited social activities. Based on the materials of the phenomenological interviews with the patients going through dialysis, I want to show how the incorporation of technology and bodily integrity is enacted through pain and discomfort. Bio: I am a Senior Lecturer in Bioethics at Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University. Also, I am a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Philosophy at Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (remotely). I hold a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Higher School of Economics (2019). The dissertation committee included Catherine Malabou and Adam Berg. My recent studies revolve around embodiment, disability studies, bioethics, and media theory. Currently, I am finishing phenomenological research on relations between doctors, patients, and technologies in palliative care. Also, I am conducting the phenomenological interviews with patients going through hemodialysis under the condition of chronic kidney failure. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

1
Liesbeth Schoonheim - 'Posters, protests, and reclaiming the streets' 21:47

51 weeks ago21:47

21:47

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Liesbeth Schoonheim, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Liesbeth Schoonheim 'Posters, protests, and reclaiming the streets' Abstract: Street protests create spaces of appearance (Arendt) that galvanize public support for hitherto hidden forms of precarity and oppression. Put in these terms, street protests raise questions about their duration, as they rely on the physical proximity of people; they also raise issues of who can and cannot participate in this space of appearance and in what way, as public space is subject to various forms of policing(Butler). In this paper, I investigate these limits of embodied resistance by looking at a different form of street protest, namely the feminist collectives that put up posters in the streets of Brussels denouncing gender-and sex-based violence. Some of these target street harassment by imploring passers-by to “laisse[r] les filles tranquilles”, while others focus on feminicide, publishing the name of victims of domestic violence. In different ways, these interventions relate isolated and privatized experiences of violence to patriarchal structures. First, deploying Arendt's political phenomenology, I argue that these artefacts are intended as a (semi-)permanent mark on the public space; and they invoke the victims of various forms of gender-and sex-based violence, reclaiming the streets as a site of commemoration and of free movement. Secondly, I show how they also presuppose passers-by that stop, read and respond to them. I suggest this interpellation should be understood as a moment of critique, in the sense in which critical phenomenologists (Guenther, Al-Saji, Salamon) have defined it as the suspension of everyday comportment and the exposure of historically contingent structures of oppression. Thirdly, I argue (contra Arendt) that protest does not always require the physical proximity of a group of people engaging in purposeful action-in-concert, but can also develop as a series (Sartre, Young), in this case, as the interpellation of passers-by as possible agents of social change, engaging in acts of indignant remembrance and of leaving women and other targeted groups alone. Bio: Liesbeth Schoonheim is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University, Berlin, working on the intersection of political theory, feminism, and social theory. Previously, she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at KU Leuven (Belgium) and an appointment as a lecturer at University of Amsterdam (Netherlands). This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Eugenia Stefanello - 'Empathy, Narrative Medicine, and (Mis)Representation of Illness: A Phenomenological Perspective' 19:41

51 weeks ago19:41

19:41

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Eugenia Stefanello, University of Padova. Eugenia Stefanello 'Empathy, Narrative Medicine, and (Mis)Representation of Illness: A Phenomenological Perspective' Abstract: It is often argued that mutual understanding is crucial in clinical encounters. In particular, narrative medicine proponents strongly believe that through mutual understanding and doctors' narrative skills it is possible to increase both empathy in the doctor-patient relationship and affiliation within the community of healthcare professionals (Charon, 2017; DasGupta & Charon, 2004). However, although empathy appears to be one of the main aims of narrative medicine, it has not been extensively analyzed by its supporters. For this reason, I argue that narrative medicine should discuss on the one hand what the role of empathy is in narrative medicine's proposal and, on the other hand, what kind of empathy should be involved in the clinical encounter. In this regard, I show that if the type of empathy involved in narrative medicine is understood as synonymous with the doctors' ability to simulate the patients' perspectives as proposed by Simulation Theory (Goldman, 2006), narrative medicine and the clinical encounter can be negatively impacted (Gallagher, 2007). In addition, when empathy is reduced to a simulation-plus-projection mechanism, it can not only radicalize the other's alterity triggering possible harm towards others (Bubandt & Willerslev, 2015) but also disregard whether and how deeply people want or need to share their perspectives and ignore the situatedness of the empathic understanding exacerbating existing inequalities (Hollan, 2008, 2017). Finally, I suggest that narrative medicine should explore alternative accounts of empathy. Specifically, the phenomenological approach (Scheler, 1913; Stein, 1917) offers one that is multifaceted and layered in which empathy has a specific but partial role in understanding others (Throop & Zahavi, 2020). Accordingly, I will try to show that phenomenological empathy seems able to provide healthcare professionals guidance to improve their narrative skills and achieve the ultimate goal of affiliation, without having to face the objections raised against a simulationist concept of empathy (Vendrell Ferran, 2015; Zahavi, 2014). References Bubandt, N., & Willerslev, R. (2015). The Dark Side of Empathy: Mimesis, Deception, and the Magic of Alterity. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 57(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0010417514000589 Charon, R. (2017). The principles and practice of narrative medicine. Oxford University Press. DasGupta, S., & Charon, R. (2004). Personal Illness Narratives: Using Reflective Writing to Teach Empathy. Academic Medicine, 79(4), 351–356. https://doi.org/10.1097/00001888-200404000-00013 Gallagher, S. (2007). Simulation trouble. Social Neuroscience, 2(3–4), 353–365. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470910601183549 Goldman, A. I. (2006). Simulating minds: The philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience of mindreading. Oxford University Press. Hollan, D. (2008). Being There: On the Imaginative Aspects of Understanding Others and Being Understood. Ethos, 36(4), 475–489. Hollan, D. (2017). Empathy across cultures. In The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Empathy. Routledge. Scheler, M. (1913). The nature of sympathy (W. Stark, Trans.). Routledge and KPaul. Stein, E. (1917). On the Problem of Empathy (W. Stein, Trans.). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-5546-7 Throop, C. J., & Zahavi, D. (2020). Dark and Bright Empathy: Phenomenological and Anthropological Reflections. Current Anthropology, 61(3), 283–303. https://doi.org/10.1086/708844 Vendrell Ferran, Í. (2015). Empathy, Emotional Sharing and Feelings in Stein's Early Work. Human Studies, 38(4), 481–502. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-015-9346-4 Zahavi, D. (2014). Empathy and Other-Directed Intentionality. Topoi, 33(1), 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-013-9197-4 Bio: Eugenia Stefanello is a PhD Student in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), University of Padova, Italy. Her research focuses on Phenomenology, Moral Philosophy, Bioethics, and Philosophy of Mind with a particular interest in empathy and its influence on the deliberative process. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

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Joshua Bergamin - 'When is ‘my truth' true? Interpreting lived experience in phenomenological interviews' 19:54

51 weeks ago19:54

19:54

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Joshua Bergamin, University of Vienna. Joshua Bergamin 'When is ‘my truth' true? Interpreting lived experience in phenomenological interviews' Abstract: Many topics and methodologies for investigating subjectivity that have become widespread in the social sciences – for example, an emphasis on ‘lived experience' – have been significantly developed by applied phenomenologists. Yet phenomenology's own commitments often bring it into tension with giving full voice to its subjects. For example, the ‘bracketing' of prejudices may not take into account how those prejudices are constitutive of the subject herself. Furthermore, researchers are rarely trained to self-reflect on how their own history – cultural, sexual, professional – might colour their interpretation of a subject's ‘bracketed' responses. A risk therefore is that a subject's experience be distorted by the researcher's own interests. But at the same time, the latter's immersion in a broader investigative discourse offers insights to which their subject may have little access. My paper examines this tension as it manifests in an ongoing interdisciplinary research project, working with improvising musical ensembles. Centred on the co-creation of a ‘hermeneutic circle' between artwork, artist, and analysts, the project aims not only to render the research process itself transparent, but to consciously blur the distinction between researchers and research subjects, treating subjects as partners in a creative process in which all participants have a voice and an opportunity to learn/grow. After briefly outlining our methodologies, I dig deeper into the problems of truth and interpretation that this process exposes, namely: – At what points do ‘lived experience' accounts reach limits that might be better informed by critical distance or historical consciousness? – Is it essential to reconcile contradictions between levels of analysis? If so, how do we give weight to values like truth while doing justice to different lived realities? If not, can we avoid reperpetuating power imbalances between researcher and subject? I examine these questions with reference to particular case studies, while suggesting potential generalisable conclusions. Bio: Joshua Bergamin is a philosopher at the University of Vienna and co-PI of the interdisciplinary artistic research project (Musical) Improvisation and Ethics, funded by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). He has a PhD from Durham University, where he worked as an ‘applied phenomenologist,' an MA from the University of Queensland for work on Heidegger and cognitive science, and BAs from the University of South Australia. His academic work is supplemented by training and practical experience as a physical artist and musician (mostly percussion), and he has choreographed and performed at many festivals and immersive events. This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Tom Hey - 'A Phenomenological Approach to Bulimia' 16:54

51 weeks ago16:54

16:54

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Tom Hey, Lancaster University. Tom Hey 'A Phenomenological Approach to Bulimia' Abstract: Bulimia has been medically and socially constructed as an illness afflicting affluent, young, white women, which is to be cured through weight gain and the resumption of a ‘normal' relationship with food. This myopic depiction of bulimia represents a predilection to ‘make sense' of illness experiences in medically- and/or culturally-intelligible terms, and constitutes epistemic violence towards sufferers through its erasure of diverse forms of suffering and its disavowal of the subjective complexities of recovery. The pervasiveness of the eating disorder memoir, which dominates written representations of bulimia and positions linear recovery (expressed in narrative terms) as an experiential norm, further marginalises ongoing experiences of suffering; as Angela Woods argues, ‘[n]arrative does not have a monopoly on expressivity' (Woods, 2013: 124). In this paper I will use a phenomenological approach informed by affect theories, specifically Sara Ahmed's work on orientations and attachments, to engage with embodied experiences of bulimia. I will read Bulimics on Bulimia (2009), a collection of fragmented, first-person, present-tense accounts of bulimia edited by Maria Stavrou, to propose that living with bulimia can engender individualised, affectively-charged attachments between selves, objects, and spaces through which each is destabilised and redrawn. Aiming to ‘provide a sample of insight into what life is like living with bulimia' (Stavrou, 2009: 7), Bulimics on Bulimia seeks to address the privileged articulacy of narrativized accounts of bulimia through its representation of moments of intensity situated within social worlds from a polyphony of voices. Using an engaged phenomenological methodology which provides new ways of listening to written accounts of living with bulimia, I will seek to rearticulate bulimia as an object around which surges illogical, ambivalent feelings and emotions. Bio: Tom Hey is an AHRC-funded PhD student at Lancaster University, researching representations of eating disorders in contemporary literature through the intersecting frameworks of the medical humanities, postcolonial theories, and affect theories. This recording was taken from our recent conference . The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project. 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP ?…

BSP Podcast

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Ida Djursaa - 'Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Erotic' 21:43

52 weeks ago21:43

21:43

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Ida Djursaa, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London. Ida Djursaa 'Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Erotic' Abstract: This paper seeks to advance a phenomenological notion of sexuality as a modality of bodily sensibility through the lens of Merleau-Ponty. Feminist philosophers such as Judith Butler (1989) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994) have critiqued Merleau-Ponty's analysis of sexuality in the Phenomenology of Perception for presenting sexuality in a universalist (hence masculinist) way, abstracted from the reality of gender difference and non-heterosexual identities. Drawing on Alia Al-Saji's (2008) and Tom Sparrow's (2015) work on sensibility, however, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty's notion of sexuality should be understood as a modality of sensibility that operates prior to, and as generative of, categorisations into sexual identities. I show how Merleau-Ponty's analysis of sexuality, rather than making a claim about the universalist character of desire such as it must be for everyone, in fact makes a more basic claim about the strictly bodily, that is, the sensible dimension of our most intimate intercorporeal relations. Insofar as sensibility designates the pre-reflective and pre-perceptual binding of bodies, then, understanding sexuality as a modality of sensibility, this paper argues, allows us to investigate the ways in which bodies live desire prior to perception and reflection. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty's description of sexuality as the ‘blind linking of bodies' (Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, p159) is thus not reducible to sexual identity but is rather descriptive of the erotic as the life force that motivates attractions and repulsions – affective ‘pulls' – between bodies. Finally, the paper asks how this erotic life force itself, and hence our bodies' (in)capacity for intimacy, is structured by our socio-politico-historical contexts, including the reality of gender norms? Can a critical phenomenology of sexuality help us to not only understand but also empower the erotic lives of bodies? Bio: I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London. My research project critically traces the phenomenological notion of transcendence such as it operates in Husserl, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty. It argues that transcendence works, most basically, at the level of bodily sensibility rather than consciousness or perception. Ultimately, I employ this notion of sensibility to investigate how the particular ways in which our bodies move are structured by our individual history as well as the socio-cultural-historical contexts which invisibly prescribe normative ways of moving and acting based on gender, race, class.…

BSP Podcast

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Kira Meyer - 'Ecophenomenology as a Contribution to Transformation' 21:22

52 weeks ago21:22

21:22

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Kira Meyer, Kiel University. Kira Meyer 'Ecophenomenology as a Contribution to Transformation' Abstract: Engaged phenomenology does not only have the potential to transform socio-political realities and power relations between human beings, but also those between man and nature. Currently, anthropocentrism, namely the view that nature has only an instrumental value which is relative to the ends of human beings, governs these realities and relations. Phenomenology can contribute to transform them by including the lived body in the self-understanding of human beings. Understanding the lived body as the “nature that we are ourselves” (Böhme, 2019) would involve a different conception of nature as well: Man and nature wouldn't be dichotomic anymore, rather human beings would be part of nature. Embracing such an ecophenomenological (cf. Brown and Toadvine, 2003) conception would have important normative implications. I will present them in three steps. Firstly, I argue that the instrumental value of nature for the fulfillment of human basic needs and health can be particularly well justified based on an ecophenomenological approach for it is precisely man's corporeality by virtue of which he has these needs and through which health (or illness) manifest themselves. Secondly, sentience is inseparable from corporeality. Therefore, insofar as it is a concern of the ecophenomenological approach to take corporeality and its implications seriously, sentient beings deserve direct moral consideration. Thirdly, natural entities build an integral part of the good life of human beings, hence they deserve indirect moral consideration because of their eudaimonic value (Chan et al., 2016). As corporeal beings, humans can enjoy nature aisthetically, that is via their senses: The beautiful, the sublime, but also nature as home, as offering leisure and recreation, spirituality and transformation (Krebs et al., 2021). Taking corporeality into account, that is embracing an ecophenomenological account, thus leads to a deep anthropocentric position (Ott, 2016) and facilitates the transformation of current power relations and thereby shaped human-nature-relations. (301 words exclusive of literature) Literature:BÖHME, G. 2019. Leib: Die Natur, die wir selbst sind, Berlin, Suhrkamp.BROWN, C. S. & TOADVINE, T. 2003. Eco-Phenomenology. An Introduction. In: BROWN, C. S. & TOADVINE, T. (eds.) Eco-phenomenology: Back to the Earth Itself. New York: State University of New York Press.CHAN, K. M. A., BALVANERA, P., BENESSAIAH, K., CHAPMAN, M., DÍAZ, S., GÓMEZ-BAGGETHUN, E., GOULD, R., HANNAHS, N., JAX, K., KLAIN, S., LUCK, G. W., MARTÍN-LÓPEZ, B., MURACA, B., NORTON, B., OTT, K., PASCUAL, U., SATTERFIELD, T., TADAKI, M., TAGGART, J. & TURNER, N. 2016. Why protect nature? Rethinking values and the environment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113, 1462–1465.KREBS, A., SCHUSTER, S., FISCHER, A. & MÜLLER, J. 2021. Das Weltbild der Igel. Naturethik einmal anders, Basel, Schwabe Verlag.OTT, K. 2016. On the Meaning of Eudemonic Arguments for a Deep Anthropocentric Environmental Ethics. New German Critique, 43, 105-126. Bio: Kira Meyer is a doctoral candidate in the field of environmental ethics at Kiel University. In her dissertation project she investigates the connection between the lived body and a relational understanding of freedom and argues on this basis for the compatibility of (strong) sustainability and freedom. Her research focuses on (eco-)phenomenology, new phenomenology, environmental ethics, and the concept of political freedom.…

BSP Podcast

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Dr Ullrich Haase - ‘Is Heidegger’s Other Thinking necessarily an Ecological Thinking? Reflections on the Absence of Nature and the Destiny of Technology’ 48:15

52 weeks ago48:15

48:15

Season 6 continues with another keynote presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. ‘Is Heidegger’s Other Thinking necessarily an Ecological Thinking? Reflections on the Absence of Nature and the Destiny of Technology’ This year saw the 50th anniversary of The Limits of Growth, the publication by the Club of Rome, which for many was the trigger of the birth of climate activism. The message was that action on global warming now was necessary immediately – but nothing much happened until the Fridays for Future movement, which appeared as if it just occurred to us that there might be a problem. About a decade after the publication of The Limits of Growth, parts of the ecological movement wondered why nothing happened and turned towards the critique of technological rationalism, following Nietzsche and Heidegger, to provide an explanation for that inaction and to open the way for a more radical ecological thinking. While the insight that nothing would change as long as ecology would either be swallowed up by the same technological rationalism that caused the crisis, nor by some middle-class Europeans ‘moving off grid’, did give rise to more than a decade of engagement, what in turn has happened to this movement, which claimed that ecology can only be meaningful when joining postmodernism’s turn to language, while also claiming that postmodernism is essentially an ecological thinking? Again, nothing. Instead, all we wonder about today is whether Heidegger was an antisemite or not. In this talk I will reflect on the reasons for which Heidegger’s other thinking has become so unpalatable in our age and why these reasons are the same that should still engage us with the problems of global heating and globalization and the critique of the feverish search for technical solutions to the problem of technology. Ullrich Haase is Principal Lecturer at the Manchester Metropolitan University. His research centres on 19th and 20th Century German and French Philosophy, especially Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida and Blanchot. He served as the editor of the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology from 2005 to 2020.…

BSP Podcast

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Prof. Giovanna Colombetti - ‘Varieties of incorporation: beyond the blind man’s cane’ 47:26

1 year ago47:26

47:26

Season 6 continues with another keynote presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. ‘Varieties of incorporation: beyond the blind man’s cane’ In post-phenomenology and other disciplines, “incorporation” refers to the assimilation or integration of tools into the body. In Phenomenology of Perception, Merleau-Ponty had already discussed examples of tool-incorporation—including, famously, the example of the blind man and his cane. Merleau-Ponty's analysis refers to what he called the “body schema”: our prereflective awareness of ourselves in terms of what we can do and perceive in the world. Subsequent discussions of incorporation have similarly focused on the integration of tools into the tacit (or even unconscious and sub-personal) sensorimotor body. In my talk I want to draw attention to the fact that we can incorporate tools in other ways, too, because we experience ourselves not just as tacit sensorimotor bodies. First, we can also incorporate tools into the so-called “body image”—the experience of our body as an intentional object of awareness, which can itself be distinguished into various (sub)experiences. Second, we can incorporate tools into our “lived seen body”—our sense of how we appear to others. I will illustrate these distinctions with examples and empirical evidence, and conclude with some reflections about the relationship between experiences of incorporation and the much discussed notion of the “extended mind”. Giovanna Colombetti is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Social and Political Sciences, Philosophy, and Anthropology of the University of Exeter (UK). She was educated in Italy and the UK, and after receiving her PhD from the University of Sussex in 2004, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the universities of York (Canada), Trento (Italy), and Harvard. Since 2007 she has worked and lived in Exeter, temporarily visiting various research centres in Europe, Asia, and Australia. At Exeter she is also member of EGENIS (The Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences), where she leads the Mind, Body, and Culture research cluster. She is further affiliated with the University of Southern Denmark, where since 2021 she has been Adjunct Professor in Philosophy at the Faculty of Health Sciences, and collaborates with its research cluster on Movement, Culture, and Society. She is also Associate Editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Her primary research interests lie at the intersection of philosophy of cognitive science (especially embodied and situated cognition), philosophy of emotion, phenomenology, and material culture studies. She has worked the notions of emotion and affectivity, and on their relation to theories of cognition, embodiment, enaction, and extended mind. She is the author of several articles and book chapters in which she argues that, from an embodied-enactive perspective, cognition and emotion are not separate mental faculties, and rather emotion is a primordial and all-pervasive dimension of the mind. In 2010-2014 she was Principal Investigator of a Starting Grant funded by the European Research Council, titled “Emoting the Embodied Mind”, during which she wrote her monograph The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind (MIT Press, 2014). Since then, she has worked mainly on the notion of “situated affectivity” and is currently writing a second monograph on how we use objects to influence our affective life.…

BSP Podcast

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Prof. Alia Al-Saji - 'Fanon and an Engaged Phenomenology of Affect: Touching the wounds of colonial duration' 55:25

1 year ago55:25

55:25

The BSP Podcast Season 6 begins with the first keynote speaker from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II. 'Fanon and an Engaged Phenomenology of Affect: Touching the wounds of colonial duration' Surrounding Frantz Fanon's work is a persistent, and at times reductive, debate on method: phenomenological, psychoanalytic, psychiatric, Merleau-Pontian, Sartrean, afropessimist, or decolonial. What is often forgotten is that the originality of Fanon's philosophy comes from the multiplicity of approaches he was able to weave together. More so, in attempts to read Fanon through other philosophers (e.g. Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, or Lacan), his contemporaneity with these thinkers is elided. I propose it might be time to read phenomenology through Fanon, rather than centering analysis on Fanon's assumed debt to Merleau-Ponty's body schema. In this paper, I focus on the question of phenomenological method (without assuming this to be the defining method of Fanon's work). My argument is not one from continuity. Rather, I want to show how Fanonian phenomenology is one of rupture with, and ungrounding of, the phenomenological tradition—how Fanon creates his own method through an engaged phenomenology of racialized affect and touch that breaks with the perceptual spectacle at the centre of most phenomenologies before him. This is to say that Fanon's phenomenology is not mere description, that he invents a critical, distinctly temporal, and anticolonial method from the affective territory in which he has had to dwell. Alia Al-Saji is Associate Professor of Philosophy at McGill University. Her work brings together phenomenology, critical philosophy of race, and feminist theory, with an abiding interest in questions of time, affect, and racialization. Notable among her works, she is the author of “The Racialization of Muslim Veils” (Philosophy and Social Criticism, 2010), “Decolonizing Bergson” (Beyond Bergson, SUNY 2019), and “Glued to the Image: A critical phenomenology of racialization through works of Art” (Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 2019). Al-Saji argues for the philosophical, political, and lived importance of affective hesitation, and is currently completing a monograph entitled Hesitation: Critical Phenomenology, Colonial Duration, and the Affective Weight of the Past.…

BSP Podcast

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Marieke Borren - ‘The Spatial Phenomenology of White Embodiment’ 30:17

3 years ago30:17

30:17

Season five of our podcast concludes with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation from Marieke Borren, Faculty of Humanities, Open University Netherlands. ABSTRACT: Within critical race theory, phenomenological scholarship is unique in focusing on the racialized body. Based on the work of Fanon and Merleau-Ponty (even if the latter does not address racial difference), phenomenologists have recently developed rich explorations of racial embodiment, predominantly in a visual register (Alcoff, Al-Saji, Gordon, Weiss, Yancy, among others). However, ‘white’ and ‘black’ embodiment are not just involved in perceptual (notably: visual) habits, but also, so I will argue in this paper, in ways of inhabiting and taking up space and habits of moving. What ‘I can’ do, and where, is to a large extent dependent upon my racial situation. This presentation seeks to expand the phenomenology of racial embodiment, more particularly whiteness, by attending not just to the (in)visibility but also to the spatiality and motility of racialized – in particular: white – embodiment. To this end, I will I confront the conceptual resources for understanding spatiality and motility in relation to embodiment, present in the work of Merleau-Ponty (while challenging its false racial neutrality), Fanon’s phenomenological account of black racialization, and Shannon Sullivan’s (feminist) pragmatist account of the ‘ontological expansiveness’ of whiteness. Being a key feature of what the latter calls ‘the unconscious habits of racial privilege’, white expansiveness entails the taken-for-granted freedom to inhabit space and move around as one sees fit. Finally, I will argue that the normative implications of the phenomenology of white expansiveness are undecided. It might be strategically employed for undercutting itself. However, any effort to fight white privilege may end up reconfirming rather than undermining white expansiveness. I will illustrate this undecidability with the case study of Carola Rackete, the self-proclaimed white and privileged German captain of the Sea-Watch 3, who rescued 42 African migrants on the Mediterranean and brought them into port in Lampedusa in July 2019. BIO: Marieke Borren currently works as an assistant professor in philosophy at Open University Netherlands. From 2015-2017, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at the department of philosophy of the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Specializing in Hannah Arendt’s political phenomenology, her research expertise lies at the intersection of continental political philosophy, philosophical anthropology and phenomenology. She is particularly interested in feminist and postcolonial perspectives. She has widely published on Arendt’s work, in particular about dis-placement and having a place in the world (‘the right to have rights’), focusing on the predicament of refugees and undocumented migrants. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Ondra Kvapil - ‘Thought-provoking Death’ 24:45

3 years ago24:45

24:45

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Ondra Kvapil, École Normale Supérieure de Paris / Charles University in Prague. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: My paper will focus on Sartre’s meditations on death. Sartre formulates them as a critique of Heidegger – and the majority of commentators adopt his approach. I will however claim it more fruitful to read Sartre’s conclusions in the light of Husserl’s analyses of death. These were indeed unknown to Sartre, nonetheless the two share key presuppositions: Because our death cannot be grasped in reflection on our subjectivity, it cannot belong to the ontological structure of subjectivity itself; death is then classified as a mundane event, as well as a limit-problem of phenomenological description. I will demonstrate how Sartre radicalizes this notion. Death is not a limit-problem only for transcendental reflection, but already in pre-theoretical and pre-phenomenological attitude. Not only can we never live to seeit coming, we cannot even anticipate it, as the instant of death is principally indeterminate. The only meaning we can attribute to our death is that of the end of our –meaningful, or meaningless – existence. Our death is thus categorically different from all that is intended in the world. There is also a tacit consequence to the exclusion of death from subjectivity: mortality is reduced to bodily vulnerability. Death is the final strike, which may come in various disguises – perhaps that of a virus. Coming from the world, where we nevertheless cannot intend it, death remains essentially exterior to us. In sum, I will unravel the missing link between Husserl’s unpublished reflections on death and Levinas’ grasp of death as radically Other. Moreover, it will emerge that death, which as a mundane fact becomes a subject to a variety of disciplines, at the same time exceeds all empirical facts and thus engages philosophy. Far from being limited to academia, death engages thinking of each and every one of us – no matter where we come from. BIO: I am a postgraduate researcher at École Normale Supérieure de Paris and Charles University in Prague, currently working on my dissertation The Philosophical Significance of Death. Previously, I have also studied at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. I have taught several courses in phenomenological philosophy, mainly on Heidegger, at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Charles University. My research concerns phenomenology, existentialism and hermeneutics, as well as 19th-century continental philosophy, with particular research interests that include death and mortality, relation between being and nothingness, and the problem of time. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Sam McAuliffe - ‘The Improvisational Encounter: What is Common to Music and Hermeneutic-Phenomenology’ 22:40

3 years ago22:40

22:40

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation from Sam McAuliffe, Monash University ABSTRACT: Hermeneutic-phenomenology as a method of inquiry is increasingly finding its way into music studies, and the performing arts more generally. Indeed, with respect to music studies there is no shortage of projects where hermeneutic-phenomenology is employed as a means to better understand music, both from the perspective of creating music and experiencing it as a spectator. There is a clear distinction, then, between the practice of music and the application of hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry; one is used to understand the other. Rarely acknowledged however, are those characteristics that are common to both music and hermeneutic-phenomenology. In this paper I would like to explore one of those shared characteristics: improvisation. By exploring the hermeneutic-phenomenological tradition from a Gadamerian perspective and the practice of music, broadly conceived, I argue that what is common to each is the ‘improvisational encounter’. Which is to say, the improvisation that is essential to the practice of music is equally essential to hermeneutic-phenomenological inquiry. By highlighting the hermeneutic-phenomenological nature of improvisation in music and the improvisational nature of hermeneutic-phenomenology we might better notice the relevance of each field to the other. Consequently, not only can applied hermeneutic-phenomenology better speak to the practice of music, but so too can studying music provide insight into hermeneutic-phenomenology as such. Thus, perhaps by acknowledging the commonalities between art and philosophy we can notice ways in which these disciplines might speak to and complement one another. BIO: Sam McAuliffe is a PhD candidate at Monash University, working at the intersection of improvised music and philosophical hermeneutics. In addition to his academic work Sam has worked as a musical director for experimental theatre productions, has curated sound installations for major Australian art festivals, and he plays guitar in a variety of ensembles. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Adriano Lotito - ‘Tran Duc Thao between Phenomenology and Marxism’ 26:55

4 years ago26:55

26:55

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Adriano Lotito, Milano-Bicocca University. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: This contribution focuses on the Tran Duc Thao’s work, Phenomenology and Dialectical Materialism, that is fundamental to post-war French thought, having influenced thinkers as Lyotard and Derrida amongst others and representing the first systematic attempt to synthesize Marxism and phenomenology. Firstly I examine the Tran’s reconstruction of Husserlian phenomenology. Originally there is an objective idealism theorizing the independence of the object; then there is its reversal in a subjective idealism highlighting the constituting consciousness; finally there is the switch from static to genetic phenomenology with the thematization of the life-world as historical-empirical ground (I). Secondly I explore the contradiction indicated by Tran between the Husserl’s idealistic frame, implicating the reproduction of an abstract dualism, and the results of the concrete analysis, bound to the original claim of going back to the things themselves. This tension is particularly detectable in The Origin of Geometry (II). Thirdly I discuss the Tran’s solution to this riddle, namely the radicalisation of the materialistic stance discovered in the Husserl’s late writings towards a Marxist horizon. The genesis of the a priori forms of the antepredicative experience is derived from the evolution of species and from the development of human work. The dialectic of behaviour as practical interaction between organism and nature determines the emergence of meanings structuring the experience. The notion of intentionality is interpreted as result of an immanent negation, the aufhebung of any immediate determinations through the work of an emerging bodily-social intersubjectivity that in this way reaches the self-consciousness. The real movement, insofar as is sketched out and repressed at once, is sublated as intentional content. Transcendental subjectivity becomes an immanent subjectivisation of the object through praxis. This could lead to an alternative antireductionist ontologization of phenomenology despite a teleologism that risks to cage the dialectic in a too narrow path (III). BIO: Adriano Lotito graduated in Philosophy (B.A) at the University of Bologna with a thesis entitled Phenomenology and Marxism in Tran Duc Thao (Supervisor Prof. Manlio Iofrida) and in Philosophy of the Contemporary World (M.A) at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University with a thesis entitled Criteria of Normativity in the Axel Honneth’s Critical Theory (Supervisor Prof. Roberto Mordacci). He is currently attending the Advanced Course in Critical Theory of Society at the Milano-Bicocca University. He is focusing, with the view to a future Ph.D., on the rethinking of the immanent critique specifically in connection with the work transformations. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Maria-Nefeli Panetsos - ‘Dancing Phenomenology: A New Source of Non-Verbal Knowledge’ 20:53

4 years ago20:53

20:53

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation from Maria-Nefeli Panetsos, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. ABSTRACT: When talking about Phenomenology we usually think about only the traditional studies of the subject’s perception of its surrounding phenomena. However, when turning the point of view towards the body, except the first steps done by Merleau-Ponty, Philosophy remains under some limitations of the orthological perception of reality. I found interesting the fact that in the history of Philosophy there is a clear absence towards the art of Dance, as the main corporeal - and for Hegel ‘primitive’ and ‘uncivilized’ - form of art which has no place in the fine art hierarchy. Looking for the reasons why this may have happened, I see that there always have been the fear of the body as a source of knowledge, as it has been always seen as unreliable filter of the human perception. However dance helps to see how the process of sensing and understanding one’s subjectivity and may enrich and change the perspective of one’s identity. I would like to merge the concept of the dancer with the phenomenological existential subject, as an example of conscious and aware subject that actively experiences its existence, transcendental self and its physicality into the intersubjective space where it lives. Through dance, borders and ‘merleaupontian’ fleshes can be managed in a conscious way, essentially focusing on one’s subjectivity and its relationship with time, space, other objects and subjects. As Prof. Shusterman already proposes in his Somaesthetics, the philosophical research can be amplified in the embodied experience of other corporeal activities that usually are not taken into consideration as explanatory for the human existence. An involved, inclusive phenomenological process, will definitely find further ways to sense and understand the aspects of the subject’s condition, as the self and identity are always related and influenced by the corporeal dimension of the human. BIO: My name is Maria-Nefeli Panetsos, born in Madrid (Spain), student of the Italian School of Madrid, and recent graduate student of the faculty of Philosophy, Pedagogy and Psychology of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where I specialised in Philosophy and my main fields of interest have been Phenomenology, Existentialism and Aesthetics. Since 2016 I started personal research focusing on the Identity of Dance and its Aesthetics, and later I continue finding connections with Philosophy of the Body and other applied phenomenological and existentialist perspective of Philosophy. I'm currently interested in continuing my research in Art History studies and Aesthetics in a postgraduate level. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Pablo Fernandez Velasco - ‘Evenki wandering and situationist wandering’ 22:37

4 years ago22:37

22:37

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Pablo Fernandez Velasco, Institut Jean Nicod. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: This paper provides a comparative phenomenological analysis of the navigational practices of Evenki reindeer herders in arctic Siberia and of the artistic dérives (drifting excercises) of the Situationist movement. This paper will build on an existing analysis of the phenomenology of disorientation (Fernandez 2020, which focused on the negative aspects of the phenomenon) and on ethnographic research among the Evenki natives of central Siberia. Evenki reindeer herders and hunters have unique navigation methods that result in a very special relationship to their environment. A central aspect of this relationship is the feeling of being ‘manakan’ (‘making your own way’ in Evenki language), a feeling of autonomy and independence. A study of Evenki navigational style and its relationship to manakan will serve to elucidate the workings behind the emergence of the positive aspects of spatial disorientation. Section 1 introduces the topic. Section 2 provides an overview of the phenomenology of spatial disorientation. In section 3, we will introduce the case of Evenki reindeer herders and hunters and discuss their navigational methods, using both our own ethnographic work and previously existing research. Section 4 will analyse the central features of the experience of manakan in Evenki culture and how it relates to the positive aspects of spatial disorientation. Section 5 will provide a conclusion and potential avenues for future research. BIO: I am a doctoral researcher working at Institut Jean Nicod, an interdisciplinary research centre at the interface of philosophy and cognitive science. The focus of my work is on how space structures our experience of the world and of ourselves. The topic of my doctoral thesis is the phenomenology of spatial disorientation. Studying disorientation is studying how, through our bodies, culture and technology, we humans are connected to our environment, and what happens when this connection is weakened or severed. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Mary Coaten - ‘Dance Movement Psychotherapy in Acute Adult Psychiatry: Psyche and Dasein’ 20:17

4 years ago20:17

20:17

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation from Mary Coaten, Durham University. ABSTRACT: My paper explores doctoral research on the therapeutic mechanisms of Dance Movement Psychotherapy (DMP) in an in-patient setting for acute adult psychiatry through the qualitative dynamics of movement and the symbolic and metaphoric processes present. Previous research has focussed on the efficacy of DMP in relation to psychosis spectrum disorders, but little on the mechanisms, especially the role of the moving body within phenomenological approaches. I drew on the phenomenological tradition through Heidegger and Jung, utilising similarities between the two to develop ideas about body movement, space and time. For Brooke (1988), Jung and Heidegger understood the body as the incarnation of psychological life and not as the meaning-less body of anatomy; they saw psyche and dasein as spatial, viewing distance and closeness as lived realities, and not merely in absolute time which they both argued is a limited abstraction from lived reality. “Jung’s method is primarily hermeneutic-phenomenological; the psyche is not “mind” or an inner realm more or less linked to the body, but is the embodied life world, and Jung’s descriptions of it - of its autonomy, spatiality and bodiliness, for instance – achieve ontological clarity when it is articulated as Dasein." (Brooke, 1988:ii). The results demonstrated an altered sense of space and time and a specific imbalance in engaging with the future and the past. The study revealed gender differences in the use of space and sense of self. Both men and women’s movement lacked structure, a lack compensated for through my movements. Participants expressed their sense of self differently by gender. The men engaged more with one another as a group and women focussed more on the individual bodily self. Symbolic and metaphoric communications indicated a relationship between an altered sense of space and time, and the movement dynamics present acted synchronistically with the symbols and metaphors. BIO: I am a dance movement psychotherapist (DMP) with a special interest in psychosis and have recently completed my doctoral thesis at Durham University which explored the therapeutic mechanisms at play in the acute psychotic episode. For the past 15 years, I have delivered DMP groups within the acute inpatient mental health setting. My work is informed by a Jungian and phenomenological framework which highlights an embodied approach to psychopathology. I also work as a DMP within an outpatient psychological therapies team with a trauma focus. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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María Jimena Clavel Vázquez - ‘Perceiving like a girl? Sensorimotor Enactivism in the face of situated embodiment’ 22:02

4 years ago22:02

22:02

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features María Jimena Clavel Vázquez, University of Stirling and University of St Andrews. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: In what sense is perceptual experience situated? Embodied theories of perception might be good candidates to answer this question. However, most of these views have omitted the situated aspect of embodiment, i.e. the way perceptual experience is shaped by a body that is the concrete locus of our social, historical, economic and cultural situation. In this paper, I focus on sensorimotor enactivism (SMEn). I aim to show that this view can remedy this omission by paying closer attention to the idea that perceptual experience consists in situated embodied skills I begin by outlining the relevant aspects of SMEn, a theory that claims that perceptual experience is enacted by the interactions of an embodied agent with her environment (see Hurley 1998, O’Regan & Noë 2001, Noë 2004, O’Regan 2011). In section II, I argue that, although for SMEn perceptual experience is shaped by the body of the perceiver, the view fails to do justice to the situated aspect of embodiment. This aspect is reflected in perceptual experience’s lack of social and cultural neutrality. In section III, I articulate the lack of neutrality of the body by drawing on Iris Marion Young’s view of the gendered situated body (Young 1980). She claims that our social, cultural, economic, and political situation is embodied in that it is manifested in the way we relate to and inhabit our space, i.e. in our movements and comportment. In section IV, I argue that, if we accept with SMEn that perceptual experience is constituted by practical knowledge and consists in the execution of embodied skills, we should accept that these skills are also a manifestation of our situation. If perception is “something we do” (O’Regan and Noë 2001, p. 970), as the motto of SMEn goes, it is something we do as situated agents. BIO: I am a PhD candidate at the St Andrews/Stirling Philosophy Graduate Programme. I work on Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Phenomenology, and Philosophy of Mind. I am particularly interested in embodied approaches to cognition and the way these can be informed by phenomenology. For my doctoral research, I have focused on the sensorimotor theory of perceptual experience and the notion of embodiment within this approach. I have also developed an embodied approach to imagination. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Mary Fridley & Gwen Lowenheim presenting for Susan Massad - ‘Creating a New Performance of Dementia’ 14:57

4 years ago14:57

14:57

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features a presentation written by Mary Fridley & Susan Massad, with Gwen Lowenheim presenting for Susan Massad, all from The East Side Institute, New York City. ABSTRACT: As viewed through a biomedical lens – which remains the dominant way in which dementia is seen – Alzheimer’s and related dementias (ADRD) is seen primarily as a condition of loss of capabilities within an individual: of speech, of cognitive abilities, of physical capacities and, eventually, of life while research and treatment is directed toward cure of the individual. Dementia activists across the globe are now raising the question: Is the shame, stigma, and isolation that people with ADRD and their families experience in large part a result of this very narrow lenses through which dementia is understood? In this paper we will present on the Joy of Dementia (You’ve Got to Be Kiddin!) project, a playful, philosophical and conversational collective exploration of the dementia experience as an effort to introduce a different lens – a development lens – as a counter narrative that challenges the current “tragedy narrative” surrounding ADRD. Seen through a development lens, humans are no longer are viewed, not as discrete and isolated individuals but as relational beings, connected to one another in ways that allows us to grow with, rather than fear, uncertainty. In this view, a dementia diagnosis presents transformational opportunities not just for the individual diagnosed, but to everyone in the “dementia ensemble” – including people of all ages who fear growing older and losing cognitive abilities. The workshops, always experiential, often involve mixed groupings of family members, care givers, professionals and those diagnosed, introduces improvisational play and philosophical conversation as activities that support the discovery of new ways of relating, being together, listening and responding. Participants are supported to challenge deeply held assumptions about what we and others “know” about the dementia experience, and it is within this collaborative ensemble building activity that the joy that comes with creating a new performances of dementia is discovered. BIOS: Mary Fridley is pro-bono Director of Special Projects at the East Side Institute in NYC and an accomplished teacher and workshop leader. She practiced social therapy for 12 years and continues to use the social therapeutic approach as an Institute faculty member. Mary co-leads two popular workshop series, “The Joy of Dementia (You Gotta Be Kidding)” and “Laughing Matters” and was featured in a February 2019 Washington Post article, “Changing ‘the tragedy narrative’: Why a growing camp is promoting a more joyful approach to Alzheimer.” Mary is also a playwright and theater director and works as a non-profit fundraising consultant. Susan Massad is a retired clinician and medical educator. A primary care physician she has researched and taught in the arena of doctor-patient communication and the social-cultural-biological dimensions of health and wellness. She is a faculty member at the The East Side Institute where she is the co-creator of the Joy of Dementia© workshops that she coleads all over the US with colleague, Mary Fridley. Gwen Lowenheim is a learning design specialist and TESOL instructor. She is co-founder/co-director of The Snaps Project, an educational consulting firm. Gwen trains and supervises educators and social entrepreneurs around the world in a social therapeutic, performance-based learning approach that brings creativity and innovation into classrooms and community-based programs. Her programs introduce theatrical improvisation, philosophical exploration, remix and group play as part of developing collaborative teams, language learning and stress management. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Giuseppe Torre - ‘Noise, Phenomena and the Digital Psychosis’ 25:06

4 years ago25:06

25:06

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Giuseppe Torre, University of Limerick, Ireland. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: With respect to digital technologies, noise is something that is at once both fought and sought. We may wish to minimise noise in communications but require it for encrypting the very content communicated. We may wish to minimise noise when recording sound but also want to use it to improve the fidelity of the recording process. The catch is that noise is both an abstract idea and a concrete thing that does not sit comfortably in relation to systems that are deterministic/probabilistic, such as digital technologies. This is a fact that computer scientists know well but that is systematically overlooked in order to safeguard and improve the functioning of digital technologies, such as digital instruments. Indeed beyond the plethora of different kinds of noises, the comparison between analogue and digital technologies highlights the existence of just two types of noise: one that is naturally occurring (noise) and one that is humanly constructed (pseudo-noise). Digital technologies operate by moving from noise to pseudo noise, in order to then 1) crystallise reality into mathematical constructs and 2) create realities from mathematical constructs. This makes the digital realm a type of technology different from any other, namely, one in which noise is fiercely fought and used for the digitisation process but then relentlessly sought, and always denied, within the digital realm. This observation points to at least two further implications: one is that noise may point to essential differences between analogue and digital technologies; the second is that the presence or absence of noise may lead to either crippled or diverse phenomenologies. To this extent, digital technology, rather than revealing by challenging (Heidegger), has more to do with enabling a psychotic stance towards reality - one in which reality has been made to conform to our mathematically constructed idea of it … and one which might be too much even for a phenomenologist to overcome. These arguments will be developed from the perspective of a digital art practitioner. BIO: I am a lecturer in Digital Arts at the University of Limerick (Ireland). My research interest lies at the crossroads between digital art practices, open source technology/culture and philosophy. These interests respond to a questioning of the relationships between art and technology and that has so far led me to question under what forms and forces truly creative efforts may, or may not, arise. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Joel Krueger - ‘Taking Watsuji online: aidagara and expression in the techno-social niche’ 28:56

4 years ago28:56

28:56

Season five of our podcast is back after a short break, and continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Joel Krueger, University of Exeter. ABSTRACT: Despite increased interest in comparative philosophy within the past few decades — including particular interest in the Kyoto School of Japanese philosophy — Tetsurō Watsuji has not received the attention he deserves. Watsuji was a broad-ranging and original thinker who developed important insights into culture, ethics, religion, embodiment, and the self. He was also a skilled phenomenologist. His rich analysis of embodiment, space, and intersubjectivity not only predates insights developed by phenomenologists such as Sartre and Merleau-Ponty but also deepens and extends their analysis in productive ways. This talk has two objectives: first, to briefly introduce Watsuji’s phenomenology of aidagara (“betweenness”), including its novel analysis of embodiment, space, and intersubjectivity; second, to use aidagara to think through the dynamics of subjectivity and expression within the Internet-enabled “techno-social niches” found in everyday life. I argue that Watsuji develops a prescient analysis of embodiment and expression — centered around core notions of “subjective spatiality” and “spatial extendedness” — anticipating modern technologically-mediated forms of expression, connection, and engagement. More precisely, I show that instead of adopting a traditional phenomenological focus on face-to-face interaction, Watsuji instead argues that communication technologies — which now include Internet-enabled technologies and spaces — are expressive vehicles enabling new forms of emotional expression and co-regulated experiences that would be otherwise inaccessible without these technologies. For Watsuji, these expressive vehicles and spaces aren’t mere add-ons to the self and its capacities. Rather, they are progressively incorporated into the self, understood as “betweenness”. Accordingly, they should be seen as constitutive parts of our “subjective spatiality” — that is, part of the embodied self and the rich pathways of “spatial extendedness” that establish enduring interconnections with others. I consider some of Watsuji’s arguments and indicate how this view might productively impact several debates, including debates over our perceptual access to other minds. BIO: Joel Krueger is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter. He works primarily in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of cognitive science — with a particular focus on issues in 4E (embodied, embedded, enacted, extended) cognition, including emotions, social cognition, and psychopathology. He also works in comparative philosophy and philosophy of music. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Juan Toro - ‘The Ecological-Enactive Model of Disability: Why disability does not entail pathological embodiment’ 23:12

4 years ago23:12

23:12

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Juan Toro, Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen. Toro’s co-authors are Erik Rietveld, Amsterdam University Medical Center; Department of Philosophy, University of Twente, Enschede; Institute for Logic, Language and Computation, Faculty of Science, University of Amsterdam; and Julian Kiverstein, Amsterdam Brain and Cognition; Amsterdam University Medical Center. ABSTRACT: In the last 50 years, discussions of how to understand disability have been dominated by the medical and social models. According to the medical model, disability can be understood in terms of functional limitations of a disabled person’s body caused by a pathological condition, to be treated and cured through rehabilitation or normalization. In contrast, the social model claims that disability is not an individual physical condition, but is rather the outcome of oppressive conditions imposed by society on physically impaired people. Paradoxically, both models overlook the disabled person’s experience of the lived body, thus reducing the body of the disabled person to a physiological body. Based on a co-authored paper (by Juan Toro, Julian Kiverstein, and Erik Rietveld [‘The Ecological-Enactive Model of Disability: Why Disability Does Not Entail Pathological Embodiment’]) I introduce the Ecological-Enactive (EE) model of disability. The EE-model combines ideas from phenomenology, enactive cognitive science and ecological psychology with the aim of doing justice simultaneously to the lived experience of being disabled, and the physiological dimensions of disability. More specifically, we put the EE model to work to disentangle the concepts of disability and pathology. From an ecological-enactive perspective, we locate the difference between pathological and normal forms of embodiment in the person’s capacity to adapt to changes in the environment by establishing and following new norms. From a phenomenological perspective, we distinguish normal and pathological embodiment of disabled people in terms of the structure of the experience of I-can and I cannot. The I-cannot experienced by the non-pathologically disabled person can be understood as a local I-cannot, with a background of I-can: I-can do it in a different way, I-can ask for help, etc. This contrasts with the experience of I-cannot of the pathologically embodied person, which deeply pervades their being-in-the-world. To ensure that the discussion remains in contact with lived experience, we draw upon phenomenological interviews we have carried out with people with Cerebral Palsy. BIOS: Juan Toro: I’m a PhD student at the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, and a researcher at the Enactlab – an interdisciplinary team of researchers, artists, journalists and practitioners working on solutions for complex problems faced by minorities in society. In my research, I combine an empirical approach to physical disabilities – focusing on cerebral palsy – with insights from phenomenology, 4E cognition and ecological psychology. Prof. dr. Erik Rietveld is Socrates Professor, Senior Researcher at the University of Amsterdam (AMC/Department of Philosophy/ILLC/Brain & Cognition) and a Founding Partner of RAAAF [Rietveld Architecture-Art-Affordances]. In 2013 his research project on skilled action titled “The Landscape of Affordances: Situating the Embodied Mind” was awarded with a NWO VIDI-grant for the development of his research group on skilled intentionality & situated expertise. Recently he received an ERC Starting Grant for a new philosophical project titled “Skilled Intentionality for ‘Higher’ Embodied Cognition: Joining Forces with a Field of Affordances in Flux”. His work as a Socrates Professor at the University of Twente focuses on humane technology: the philosophy of making and societal embedding of technology in the humanist tradition. Julian Kiverstein is Assistant Professor of Neurophilosophy at the University of Amsterdam. He is currently writing a monograph for Palgrave Macmillan entitled The Significance of Phenomenology. He edited a comprehensive handbook for Routledge Taylor Francis on the philosophy of the social mind. He is associate editor of Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences and was until recently Book Review Editor for the Journal of Consciousness Studies. Before his appointment at Amsterdam in 2011, Kiverstein was teaching fellow at Edinburgh University, where he played a lead role in developing and designing the Mind, Language and Embodied Cognition Masters Programme, of which he also became director. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

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Ellen Moysan - ‘Phenomenological Description of the Notion of Inner Song: Doing Phenomenology to Understand Music Practice’ 23:17

4 years ago23:17

23:17

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Ellen Moysan, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: A musical performer plays or composes what is “heard in the mind.” I call this musical phenomenon: “inner song,” and I use a Husserlian framework to describe it as an object of phantasy. In the present paper, I will demonstrate how an accurate description of the inner song requires a rigorous praxis of phenomenology giving voice to actual performers coming from various backgrounds. The “inner song” is a musical phenomenon of phantasy in the sense that it is independent from the perception of a physical sound and constituted in consciousness by the imagination reshaping sensory-data (essentially sounds) in a totally new fashion. It can take two forms: a “pure phantasy object” (improvisation and composition), and a “hearing through seeing” (interpretation from a score); the difference between the two is the mode of involvement of perception. My method is to engage with phenomenology as a “praxis.” I go back to the experience of the inner song: (1) questioning my experience as a cellist, and (2) engaging in a dialogue with musicians from various traditions interviewing them about their practice. This approach provides a plurality of points of views and constitutes an “eidetic variation” that helps me to highlight the essential structures of the “inner song”. From this foundation I develop a description grounded in a Husserlian framework. Engaging with the inner song offers a unique perspective on the challenges of interdisciplinary phenomenology: first, it brings back to phenomenology as a “praxis” starting with the reduction and shaped by the object itself; second, it highlights the necessity to listen to a plurality of practitioners who have a first-hand experience of the object, here the musicians themselves; finally, it demonstrates how it is the object itself which brings together the phenomenologist and the practicing musician in a collaborative description of the lived-experience. BIO: Ellen Moysan started her education in Philosophy at Paris-Sorbonne IV (France), before studying with the French and German Master Erasmus Mundus Europhilosophy at the Karl University (Czech Republic), Hosei University (Japan), and Wuppertal University (Germany). She is now a doctoral candidate at Duquesne University (USA). Over the last ten years, Ellen Moysan has researched the notion of “inner song,” interviewing more than fifty musicians from different horizons on that topic, and creating a digital archive where the collection of interviews is available in French, Italian, and English. Currently, she is working on her interviews and finishing her dissertation. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Bence Peter Marosan - ‘Engaged Eco-phenomenology. An Eco-socialist stance based upon a phenomenological account of narrative identity’ 20:56

4 years ago20:56

20:56

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Bence Peter Marosan, Budapest Business School, Pazmany Peter Catholic University. ABSTRACT: In my presentation, I will attempt to show how a phenomenologically consequent interpretation of narrative identity would lead to eco-ethical and eco-political consequences. In particular, I will try to show the outlines of an eco-socialist theory, which implies an egalitarian approach of all living beings, and which is motivated by a phenomenological understanding of narrative identity. My presentation consists of two main parts. In the first part, I would like to treat the relationship between freedom, responsibility and – narratively conceived – personal identity, from a phenomenological point of view. The main authors of this part will be Husserl, Heidegger, Ricoeur, Lévinas and László Tengelyi. For Husserl, the narrative aspect of personal identity was already an important topic. For Heidegger, our own decisions constitute our identity. But in my opinion, there is a decisive factor, which was marginal for Heidegger, in regard of our identity and freedom: the Other. The Other’s problem became central for Lévinas, and also for Ricoeur. László Tengelyi modified Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity on a decisive point: he draws the attention to the role of “events of fate”; events that change the course of our lives fundamentally. In the second part I would like to show the ethical and political implications of the first part. The way in which we treat in fact the Other shows the best, who we are in real. But the Other must not just be a human being; she or he can be a living being whatsoever. Here I would like to emphasize the eco-phenomenological motifs in Husserl (to this see also: Erazim Kohák); and I will try to show how such motifs lead to an egalitarian, eco-socialist view of everything which lives. BIO: Bence Peter Marosan’s PhD Studies were on Philosophy and Phenomenology, and conducted at the institutes of Eötvös Loránd University (Hungary), University College Dublin (Ireland), Bergische Universität Wuppertal (Germany), Université Paris 1, Panthéon-Sorbonne, École Normale Supérieure, (France). His affiliations are now with the Budapest Business School, Pázmány Péter Catholic University. His more important publications include two monographies on Husserl (in Hungarian), and he has edited two volumes on Marx and on László Tengelyi (in Hungarian). His research interests are Phenomenology (Husserl in particular), Hermeneutics, Philosophy of Mind, Political Philosophy, Eco-ethics, Eco-politics. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Belinda Marshal - ‘Being-in-the-Virtual-World’ 30:15

4 years ago30:15

30:15

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Belinda Marshal, University of St. Andrews. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: Questions surrounding the nature of being and existence have been tackled by philosophers for centuries, however, in this paper I analyse how concepts explored by these philosophers translate into virtual environments, as explored within virtual reality technologies. To begin, I will discuss the concept of “realism” - in an attempt to argue for the case that virtual reality - although still technology - can actually be considered a form of reality in itself. In accepting that virtual reality is a form of reality - or at least, a convincing enough extension of reality, we can accept that many existential possibilities and freedoms can be explored within virtual realms. (See: Myeung-Sook (2001)) This then opens up the potential for discussion surrounding what kinds of experiences we could expect to have within virtual environments, how they compare to phenomenological discussion of experience within “real” environments - and how these still hold both philosophical, and real world significance. Phenomenological analysis of accounts of “being” in terms of technology are vastly unexplored, beyond the postphenomenological movement as written by the likes of Ihde and Verbeek - however, even within postphenomenology, this discussion rarely ventures into virtual reality technologies. This research is important due to the level of potential real world impact - which is something else I will further clarify; particularly, with the increased use of virtual reality technologies to treat people with severe disabilities, I believe that it is crucial to explore how virtual environments can best be used and designed, to enable the user to maximise their lived experiences within virtual reality, if it is not possible for them in the primary version of reality. This does not limit the impact of such research, however, as virtual reality is becoming an increasingly popular form of entertainment technology, it is critical that we aim to gain a well-rounded understanding of its potential impact. This level of research also expands beyond the phenomenological questions, but also gains strength from other areas of philosophy such as extended cognition; Clark and Chalmers’ original paper The Extended Mind (1998) has often been translated to suit modern day technology (such as the smartphone) - however, more recent research on extended cognition (and 4E cognition as a whole) has wide applicability to many forms of technology, yet is rarely explored within the context of computer-mediated reality. The cognitive links between technology and self, combined with the sensory and experiential links between virtual reality and self, can provide an excellent framework for further philosophical discussion on the phenomenology of virtuality. BIO: I have a PhD in progress at the University of St Andrews as part of the SASP program, under supervision by Prof. Michael Wheeler and Dr. Kevin Scharp, project titled: ‘Virtual Reality and the Extended Mind’. Previously completed my MA thesis titled ‘The Question Concerning Virtual Reality’ for which I was awarded a Distinction. I have also presented my paper ‘Authenticity, Virtual Reality and AI’ at Cambridge University for the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, as well as in Nottingham for the British Personalist Forum; and my paper ‘Feminism and the Extended Mind’ at Cardiff University for the Feminism and Technology conference. I also have an upcoming chapter publication in an edited volume on Transhumanism, titled ‘Evolving the Natural-born Cyborg: Using Virtuality to Navigate the Posthuman’. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
D. R. Koukal - ‘Teaching Phenomenology as a Heuristic Tool in Architectural Design’ 25:34

4 years ago25:34

25:34

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features D. R. Koukal, University of Detroit Mercy. ABSTRACT: In this paper the author will report on an ongoing experiment: teaching graduate-level students of architecture how to use phenomenology as a technique of discovery to assist them in their design process. This experiment originated in directed readings that attempted to theoretically engage phenomenologically-informed “schools” of architecture, and over fifteen years has evolved into a small seminar-workshop that is focused on having students produce their own rigorous phenomenological analyses in the service of their various thesis projects. The paper will convey the challenges of grounding non-philosophers in the demanding literature of phenomenology and its place in modern thought, and then move on to outline the basic features of the course: exposure to the “orthodox” methodologies of phenomenology; highlighting examples of phenomenological analyses of place and space by philosophers and practicing architects; and an exploration of different ways of doing phenomenology collaboratively. However, most of the paper will be focused on the “practical” dimension of the course, where every member has a say in refining an adopted collaborative methodology to phenomenologically explore a different architectural “theme” every week, all of which are chosen by the class as a whole. These explorations have taken a variety of forms over the years, including peer-reviewed free writing, directed “free” writing, sketches, illustrations, word clouds, meaning-schematics, collaborative narration, and computer-generated eidetic imagery. In the end, the author will report on the course’s successes and failures, but will ultimately conclude that the biggest challenge to any “engaged” phenomenology is motivating others to “see” or intuit what phenomenology can reveal to them, and that the best way of doing this is giving them the tools to “do” phenomenology for themselves. BIO: D.R. Koukal's research has centered on the phenomenological method and the problem of expression. They have published articles on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. They are interested in the actual practice of phenomenology, and have undertaken several investigations of the experience of media, lived space and the body. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Sadaf Soloukey - ‘Phenomenological Embodiment in Patients with Spinal Cord Injury Receiving Neural Implants’ 23:12

4 years ago23:12

23:12

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Sadaf Soloukey, Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. ABSTRACT: Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is a field of research currently experiencing unprecedented results in functional recovery of patients due to neurotechnological developments. As such, the number of patients with SCI receiving neural implants is expected to increase steadily. However, current literature seems to lack a parallel development focused on users’ experience in terms of implanted tool incorporation or embodiment of neurotechnological devices in general. As such, we ignore how interwoven neurotechnological efforts are with human experience, and how vital accurate considerations in this process are for treatment success. In a previous publication, I developed a theoretical framework forembodiment in neuro-engineering and defined three concepts that facilitate ‘transparency’: functionality, sensorimotor feedback and affective tolerance. Based on these concepts, I discuss practical guidelines for clinicians which can contribute to the actual success of embodiment: 1) The ‘Patient Preference Diagnosis’, which warms up the patient for the existential reorientation and 2) The ‘Patient Transparency Diagnosis‘ during and after implantation, which provides the patient with possibilities to fine-tune the level of incorporation. However, this attempt to capture the complexity of tool incorporation into a single theoretical framework might be inherently limited and calls for a move back from the bench to the actual bedside. In this paper, we present the results of a series of in-depth interviews with five SCI patients receiving temporary neural implants as part of a clinical trial. Based on our previously published embodied phenomenological framework, we questioned our patients on domains including 1) body image, 2) expectations of the neural implant, 3) their judgement on the possibility of incorporation of the device and 4) their ‘ideal’ implant. Interviews were performed both pre- and post-implantation, subjected to thematic analysis and compared against the backdrop of the previously mentioned theoretical framework based on embodied phenomenology as developed by group. BIO: Sadaf Soloukey is a MD/PhD-Candidate in the departments of Neuroscience and Neurosurgery at the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Sadaf holds two MSc-degrees (Neuroscience and Health Economics) and one MA-degree (Philosophy, cum Laude). Sadaf's research interests lie in neuro-technology and include neuromodulation for Spinal Cord Injury. Additionally, Sadaf works on identifying the phenomenological implications of neuro-technological interventions in the clinical domain.Sadaf’s applied philosophical work has so far received multiple awards, including the prestigious prof. Brouwer Prize awarded by the Dutch Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) to the best philosophical thesis of that academic year. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Michael Fitzgerald - ‘Phenomenological interpretations of patient engagement in research’ 24:38

4 years ago24:38

24:38

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Michael Fitzgerald, Bruyère Research Institute. Fitzgerald’s co-authors are Esther Shoemaker, Simon Fraser University; Lisa Boucher, University of Ottawa; Claire Kendall, Bruyère Research Institute. ABSTRACT: This paper draws on Husserl’s notions of epoché and phenomenological reduction to interpret patient engagement in research. The epoché suspends or bracket naturalistic assumptions about the existence of the world, so as to allow phenomenological inquiry to focus on meaning or significance. Phenomenological reduction to the life-world, in turn, functions to restore the significance of the concrete world of basic life, i.e., to allow the phenomenologist access to the structures of meaning that are the basis for all inquiry (Luft 2004). In particular, it suspends the assumptions of the positive sciences. Patient engagement in research is an approach that includes patients and caregivers as partners on the research team. Arguably, this approach has become the standard for a wide variety, if not all, types of health research, driven in part by funding agency imperatives. Studies of this approach have argued that the significance of and motivation for engaging patients can be understood in terms of three sets of values: “moral or normative (e.g., empowerment and rights), instrumental or substantive (e.g., improving research quality), and process (e.g., having to do with research conduct)” (Kendall et al. 2018). However, further investigation is needed into the impact of patient engagement in research, and in particular how it affects health researchers’ own understanding of their research activities, exploration of which has so far been limited (Staley 2015; 2017). This paper proposes a phenomenological approach, in which patient engagement is seen as a transformation of research. We suggest that patient engagement in research can function as an epoché or even a type of reduction, by challenging researchers’ assumptions about the process of research. As with the life-world reduction, this can be seen as a way of resituating health research in the life-world, so as to expand and deepen its meaning and significance. BIOS: Michael Fitzgerald, Research Associate, Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada, is a social phenomenologist with expertise in the phenomenology of international development. He works on projects on patient engagement, intersectionality and social accountability. Esther Shoemaker, Postdoctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, and Affiliated Scientist, Bruyère Research Institute, is a medical sociologist and early career researcher with sex- and gender-based mixed methods expertise in health services delivery for marginalized populations. Lisa Boucher, PhD candidate in Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, has expertise in participatory research approaches and both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her projects focus on highly marginalized populations, especially people who use illicit drugs. Claire Kendall, a primary care physician and Clinical Scientist, Bruyère Research Institute and Associate Professor, University of Ottawa, where she is also Assistant Dean, Social Accountability, has expertise in health services research, cohort and administrative data linkages, systematic reviews, participatory approaches, qualitative research and practice-based interventions, with strong links to policy makers in primary care of marginalized populations. This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/ You can check out our forthcoming events here: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/ 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. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/…

BSP Podcast

1
Lucienne Spencer - ‘The phenomenological impact of hermeneutical injustice’ 21:06

4 years ago21:06