BSP Podcast

The original intercorporeality of the Self

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.

 

This episode features a presentation from Nicole Miglio of the State University of Milan, Italy

 

Abstract:

In this talk, I examine the process of pregnancy as a sense-making experience, taking seriously its significance both for the gestating self and for the fetal-other. Drawing on recent developments in phenomenology of pregnancy (e.g., Depraz, 2003; Heinämaa, 2014; Lymer, 2016; Miglio, 2019), as well as the flourishing interest in cognitive science (e.g., Ciaunica et al. 2021), my talk aims to show how in utero tactile and olfactory experiences are original to the being-in-the-world of the human self. In the womb, the subject experiences a unique co-constitution together with their environment, which is, at the same time, the “inside” of another self (the pregnant person).  In considering the gestational experience, I argue that the concept of intercorporeality allows us to grasp a common feature of the human being – namely, the fact that our own embodiment is not a private affair, but originally intercorporeal (cf Moran, 2017) The human self finds themselves in an intercorporeal dimension even before their own birth, and conversely the gestating self has some experiences of the fetal-other as living organism inside her – namely kicking, moving, and being with(in) her.  By challenging a widespread spatial conception of human pregnancy (in terms of “container” and “inside” see e.g. Dolezal, 2018), my analyses seek to open up a way to address the subject which starts from the phenomenological reality that we are not born as adult and indipendent subjects. Keywords: pregnancy; critical phenomenology; touch; intersubjectivity.  

 

Biography:

Nicole is a Postdoc Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, State University of Milan. She earned a Ph.D. in Feminist Phenomenology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University (Milan), during which she did research visiting stays in the US (George Washington University) and in the UK (University of Exeter). After her Ph.D. discussion in September 2021, she held a postdoctoral position at the Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Haifa. Dr. Miglio’s main research areas are contemporary aesthetics, critical phenomenology, and feminist philosophy. She is currently publishing her first monograph, “Gestational Phenomenology. The Radical Intercorporeality of Pregnancy” (forthcoming with Lexington Books).

 

 

Further Information:

 

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.

 

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.

 

About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/ 

Embodied, Situated, Entangled: Iris Marion Young and 4E-cognition

Season 7 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality.

 

This episode features a presentation from Julia Zaenker of the Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen, Denmar

 

 

Abstract:

In the last decades, 4E approaches to cognition have made a strong case for the premise that our social perception originates from our interactions and hence presupposes an inherently engaged perspective. To make this case, embodied and situated cognition are thought of as complementary programmes: Situated cognition is embodied, embodied cognition situated. Depending on the authors and, more crucially, the phenomena under study one has been emphasized over the other. However, these programmes are only meaningful tools for analysis if it is clear how they are different and how they relate to one another. Recent work in critical phenomenology has helped to bring politically and ethically relevant phenomena to the attention of 4E-cognition research. In light of these “critical issues”, it has been argued that situatedness needs to be taken (more) seriously (Maur). What does this imply for the relation of situated and embodied cognition? In what sense, if at all, should situated cognition become the primary concern? To address these questions, I draw on Iris Marion Young’s phenomenological contributions to feminist and political theory. Her work should be of interest for 4E-cognition research because Young maintains a nuanced balance between the notions of embodiment and situatedness across her phenomenological work. For example, her seminal paper ‘Throwing Like a Girl’ emphasizes situated embodiment over situatedness, while ‘Gender as Seriality’ highlights the role of experiences of anonymity due to situatedness. I argue that Young’s perspective on situatedness and embodiment is not straightforward and brings out a genuinely phenomenological and political perspective of what it is like to experience situatedness and situated embodiment. I advocate that this perspective can enlighten critical 4E-cognition approaches: Firstly, because it emphasizes the importance of a multifaceted approach to situatedness. Secondly, because it can highlight potential limits of addressing critical issues within an exclusively cognitive-epistemic framework.

 

Biography:

Julia Zaenker has studied Philosophy and Chemical Engineering in Edinburgh, Darmstadt and Copenhagen and is currently a PhD-Fellow at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. In her PhD project, she investigates the interrelation of second-personal engagement, communicative engagement, reciprocity and recognition with communal and collective experiences. She is affiliated with the ERC-advanced grant project “Who are We?” directed by Dan Zahavi.

 

Further Information:

 

This recording is taken from our Annual UK Conference 2022: Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality (Exeter, UK / Hybrid) with the University of Exeter. Sponsored by the Wellcome Centre, Egenis, and the Shame and Medicine project. For the conference our speakers either presented in person at Exeter or remotely to people online and in-room, and the podcast episodes are recorded from the live broadcast feeds.

 

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast.

 

About our events: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/events/

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

 

Heidegger's Metaphysics: The Overturning of 'Being and Time' (2024)

Season 7 continues with the final of four recordings of book panels from our Annual Conference held at University College Dublin. These book discussion panels allowed recent monograph authors to present their work in conversation with a respondent.

 

In this episode, Aengus Daly presents his recent monograph Heidegger's Metaphysics: The Overturning of 'Being and Time' (2024) in conversation with Georgios Petropoulos of the University of Galway

 

Abstract: 

Heidegger’s Metaphysics explores how Heidegger continued the project of Being and Time, developing a new kind of metaphysics through a critique of Kantian transcendental philosophy. Drawing on Heidegger’s published work, lecture courses, drafts, and correspondence from the late 1920s, it reconstructs the philosophical justification for this project and its implications for Heidegger’s phenomenology of time and his understanding of philosophical concept formation.

Daly proposes that Heidegger’s project neither failed nor remained indebted to a Kantian transcendental framework and challenges the widespread interpretation of Heidegger as a critic of metaphysics. This work examines a wide range of themes that have been largely neglected in discussions of Heidegger’s work, including a phenomenology of the mythical world (in dialogue with Ernst Cassirer’s work), the origin of religious concepts, the development of a temporality of thrownness, and Heidegger’s critique of Kantian transcendentalism. It finishes by challenging the separation of Heidegger’s philosophy from his politics and asks what we can retrieve from his project today.

 

 

Biography: 

Aengus Daly teaches philosophy and is a researcher at the Institute for Transcendental Philosophy at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal, Germany. He has also translated philosophical works and numerous articles from German and French into English.

 

 

About this event: https://sites.google.com/view/licdublin2025

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

 

Book Discussion: Heidegger's Conception of Freedom: Beyond Cause and Effect (2024)

Season 7 continues with the third of four recordings of book panels from our Annual Conference held at University College Dublin. These book discussion panels allowed recent monograph authors to present their work in conversation with a respondent.

 

In this episode, Matthew Barnard presents his recent monograph Heidegger's Conception of Freedom: Beyond Cause and Effect (2024) in conversation with 

Felix Ó Murchadha, University of Galway.

 

Abstract: 

 

This book provides a thorough exploration of Martin Heidegger's distinctive understanding of freedom, examining how it departs fundamentally from traditional metaphysical conceptions rooted in causality. Heidegger's conception positions freedom not merely as the absence of constraints or the capacity to choose among alternatives, but rather as an existential phenomenon intimately bound up with the structures of human existence itself. Drawing deeply on Heidegger's key texts, the analysis reveals freedom as fundamentally tied to authenticity, possibility, and the temporal unfolding of Being.

 

 

By disentangling Heidegger’s notion of freedom from the conventional binaries of determinism and free will, the book illustrates how Heidegger locates freedom in the existentiality of Dasein, its destiny as the ultimate ground of all of its meaning and being as the abyssal locus of guilt. Crucially, freedom emerges as the condition that enables meaningful existence and genuine engagement with the world, thereby redefining human agency beyond mere cause and effect. Further, the volume argues against the consensus that Heidegger’s writings on freedom from 1927-1930 offer multiple changing conceptions of freedom, demonstrating instead that these writings work together to clarify and elaborate one unified conception of freedom.

 

Biography: 

 

Matthew J. Barnard is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Manchester Metropolitan University and serves on the Executive Committee of the British Society for Phenomenology, as well as founder and editor of their podcast. His primary research has focused on Kant, Bergson, and Heidegger, culminating in his recent book, Heidegger’s Conception of Freedom: Beyond Cause and Effect (Palgrave, 2024). He is currently developing work on two new projects: the role and implications of generative AI in higher education, and the philosophical contributions of traditionally excluded early modern women philosophers.

About this event: https://sites.google.com/view/licdublin2025

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

 

Book Discussion: The Porosity of the Self: Husserl's Philosophy of Self and Personhood (2024)

Season 7 continues with the second of four recordings of book panels from our Annual Conference held at University College Dublin. These book discussion panels allowed recent monograph authors to present their work in conversation with a respondent.

 

In this episode, Laura Jane Nanni presents her recent monograph The Porosity of the Self: Husserl's Philosophy of Self and Personhood (2024) in conversation with 

Associate Professor Timothy Mooney of University College Dublin

 

Abstract: 

The Porosity of the Self delivers an original interpretation of the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology and one of the most important philosophers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This recently published book challenges one-dimensional accounts of self and personhood that fail to capture the intricate double-sidedness of how we experience ourselves, others, and the world. The book demonstrates how Husserl's philosophy offers an important alternative account of the self as porous - a notion that emerges through a thematic reconstruction of Husserl's conceptions of embodiment, habituality, temporality, relationality, personhood, intersubjectivity, and sociality. Here, the case is made that the self should be understood as multidimensional, dynamic, and complex by highlighting its fundamentally permeable nature. The main argument of the book is that no one element of the self is experienceable in isolation, and that Husserl's understanding can equally accommodate the uniqueness of subjective experience as well as social, cultural, and historical inflections, without yielding constitutive priority to one dimension over the other. The book offers a renewed way of engaging with Husserl's philosophy and demonstrates how it can provide a rich supplementary perspective for fields such as critical phenomenology and feminist philosophy, as well as theories of self and personhood.

 

Biography: 

 

Dr Laura Jane Nanni holds a PhD in philosophy from UCD where she currently works with the Centre for Ethics in Public Life. She is an APPA certified philosophical counsellor, a philosophical facilitator on "Thinking Changes" project (funded by the Irish Government Department of Foreign Affairs), and a member of the "no bump no care" non-profit network. Her area of expertise is in the field of classical, critical and applied phenomenology, and her current research focuses on the embodied lived experience of childbirth and infant-maternal relations within the obstetric led, and midwife managed medical model of maternity care in Ireland.

 

About this event: https://sites.google.com/view/licdublin2025

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Book Discussion: Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood (2025)

Season 7 opens with the first of four recordings of book panels from our Annual Conference held at University College Dublin. These book discussion panels allowed recent monograph authors to present their work in conversation with a respondent.

In this episode, Susi Ferrarello presents her recent monograph Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood (2025) in conversation with Professor Tanja Staehler of the University of Sussex

 

Abstract: The Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood is a recently published book that provides an ethical, social, and psychological investigation of the process of becoming a mother. Through a phenomenological analysis that engages with feminist philosophy, medical ethics, philosophy of care, and phenomenological psychology, I unravel the intricacies of this transformative phase of life to shed light on layers of lived experiences that impact the well-being of the woman. This book addresses the complexity of common lived-experiences characterizing this transition; the overarching period from the first to the fourth trimester, issues concerning maternal-fetal bonding, breastfeeding, PDAM, loss of identity and coming back to work. Enriched by case studies from my philosophical counseling practice, the book provides a compassionate and insightful exploration of the struggles, triumphs, and moments of self-revelation that mothers encounter in their daily lives. By exploring the heart of the maternal experience, this book shows the often-unspoken realities faced by women as they strive to balance their roles as caregivers, partners, and individuals. The book offers a powerful means for everyday reflection on early motherhood and the ethical, as well as practical, dilemmas it raises. This text explores phenomenology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and moral psychology, making it valuable for therapists and professionals interested in the complexities of pregnancy, motherhood, and women’s mental health.

 

Biography: Susi Ferrarello, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at California State University, East Bay. She specializes in phenomenology, bioethics, feminist philosophy, and mental health, with a focus on perinatal care and the ethical implications of technology in healthcare. She has authored and edited several books, including Phenomenology of Pregnancy and Early Motherhood, The Ethics of Love, The Origin of Bioethics and Human Emotions and Bioethics and Technoethics. Beyond academia, she is the co-founder of NoBumpNoCare (U.S.) and Slancio (Italy), nonprofits dedicated to perinatal care and social solidarity. She actively mentors students and healthcare professionals and organizes international conferences on bioethics and philosophy. She works also as a philosophical counselor and writes for Psychology Today. 

 

About this event: https://sites.google.com/view/licdublin2025

 

About the BSP: https://www.thebsp.org.uk/about/

Mariia Galkina - 'Towards a phenomenology of environmental shame'

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? 

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'

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? 

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

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? 

Gage Krause - 'Desynchronization, Alienation, and the Social World in Grief'

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?