BSP Podcast

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

Episodes

Saturday Apr 03, 2021

Maja Berseneva - ‘The transformative power of vulnerability’

Saturday Apr 03, 2021

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Maja Berseneva, Freie Universitaet Berlin. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.

ABSTRACT: Being vulnerable is a conditio humana. This condition represents characteristics, key events and situations which compose the essentials of human existence. One definition of vulnerability is the general human capacity to being exposed. As such, it can make a subject a victim (when violence is inflicted), but it also represents the capability to being open to the world with its unpredictable events, and to others. Furthermore, vulnerability structures the subject’s experience of the world and makes transformation possible. The concepts of ‘limit situations’ (Jaspers) and ‘transformative events’ (Heidegger), are helpful for the understanding of how we experience ourselves as vulnerable. Encountering a transformative event as the current pandemic crisis, we are forced to realize that our safety and the foundations of our being can be instantly undone. Limit situations touch us in our core values, reminding us of the fragility of everyday life, relationships, and health. While it is possible to respond to vulnerability that shows in a limit situation through avoidance, denial, and rationalization, Jaspers advises to not hastily try to make it vanish. On the contrary, the demand and challenge lie in endurance of the unknown, of the ambiguity that this situation brings. I will argue with Butler’s critical claim that vulnerability can (and must!) be turned into strength, into a resource, since the experience of vulnerability and dependence can move us beyond and against the vocation of the paranoid victim. Acknowledging that I am vulnerable and enduring it brings a choice for encountering the other without violence: it means having space for showing consideration and attention for the other. The chance of self-improvement lies in vulnerability as permitted openness, and in waiver of protection. In compelling me to deal with my fears and vulnerabilities as part of who I am, lay the transforming power of vulnerability.

BIO: Maja Berseneva is a translator and language teacher, currently living and working in Athens, Greece. Currently graduate student of Philosophy at Freie Universitaet Berlin. Writing Master Thesis on the Vulnerable self and the ‘ethics of the welcome’ in Levinas’ work. Research interests: Philosophy of Mind, Affectivity, Self-experience, Empathy, Personhood, No-self doctrines, phenomenology, alterity, ethics of embodiment, Vulnerability and the human condition, intentionality, philosophy of medicine and mental health, nature of grief. politics in the feminine, philosophy of sexual difference, embodied female subjectivity, violence, feminist life.

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/

Saturday Mar 27, 2021

Jan Halák and Petr Kříž - ‘Phenomenological physiotherapy: extending Merleau-Ponty’s interpretation of bodily intentionality’

Saturday Mar 27, 2021

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Jan Halák and Petr Kříž as co-authors and co-presenters. Halák is from Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic, and Kříž is from Charles University, Prague, and Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic.

ABSTRACT: This paper clarifies the significance of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological account of the body for physiotherapeutic practice. Physiotherapists are trained to approach the functioning of the body from an objectivist perspective, but their therapeutic interaction with patients is not limited to an application of natural-scientific explanations. Analogically, they often perceive mechanistic models of bodily functioning as insufficient, yet they generally lack an appropriate theoretical framework to formalize and systematically describe their experience. We argue that physiotherapists’ practice well corresponds to Merleau-Ponty’s theorization of the body as the bearer of an original bodily intentionality and makes it possible to elaborate it further. On the one hand, the practice of physiotherapy corroborates Merleau-Ponty’s critical arguments against objectivist interpretations of the body. For example, norms of optimal corporeal functioning are highly individual and variable, and thus do not depend on generic physiological structures in a direct way; correspondingly, objectively measurable physical deviations rarely correspond to specific subjective difficulties; and similarly, a patient’s reflexive insight into his or her motor deficiencies does not necessarily produce significant motor improvements. Physiotherapeutic procedures can therefore be understood neither as an expert mechanical manipulation with a patient’s machine-like body nor as a process of instructing the patient’s consciousness to manipulate it in that way. On the other hand, physiotherapeutic practice can draw on Merleau-Ponty’s positive suggestion to understand motor disorders as modifications of bodily intentionality. Conceived in this way, physiotherapy approaches motor disorders as bodily mis-understandings or failures to optimally deal with motor requirements of a situation. Correspondingly, the therapeutical process itself becomes an inter-corporeal dialogue or bodily empathy. In the course of this process, a richer motor intentionality of the therapist takes up the patient’s limited, less adaptable, and more laborious intentionality, and guides it to discovering better ways of grasping a situation as meaningful through particular postures and movements.

BIOS:

Jan Halák, Ph.D., works as assistant professor at the Department of Philosophy, Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic. His scientific interests are in phenomenology, enactivism, and philosophy of embodiment. He has published several papers on Merleau-Ponty, with a special focus on Merleau-Ponty’s Collège de France period, his interpretation of the concept of body schema, and the corporeal infrastructure of higher cognitive processes. Jan Halák also published several translations of Merleau-Ponty’s works into Czech language (e.g. Resumés de cours). Dr. Halák is now working on a monograph on Merleau-Ponty’s ontology based on the concept of flesh.

Petr Kříž is a physiotherapist, doctoral student of philosophy at Charles University, Prague, and research associate at Palacky University Olomouc, Czech Republic. His thesis aims to develop a new theoretical framework for physiotherapy on the basis of a phenomenological interpretation of bodily intentionality. His scientific interests are in motor intentionality and its pathologies, differentiation of body schema, bodily empathy, and the expressivity of the body. Apart from several papers written in Czech, Petr Kříž has recently published an English paper on “Merleau-Ponty’s Discovery of the Pre-objective Body and Its Consequences for Body-Oriented Disciplines” (Sport, Ethics and Philosophy, 2019).

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Mar 20, 2021

Miriam Ambrosino - ‘Using Feeling: Engaging Aesthetic Experience in Phenomenological Practice’

Saturday Mar 20, 2021

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Miriam Ambrosino, New York University. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.

ABSTRACT: In her essay, “The Difference of Feminist Phenomenology: The Case of Shame,” Bonnie Mann (2018) contends that feminist scholarship in all areas of philosophy is up against “an affective problem, not a cognitive one.” Mann calls attention to the “problem of reverence” that prevents philosophy—especially feminist phenomenology—from considering new methods of theorizing and interpreting. Following Mann's claims and Alia Al-Saji’s (2014) work on affective hesitation, I investigate how contemporary thinkers can attend to and thus reconfigure their affective commitments of reverence towards the white male canon in phenomenology. I argue that part of this project involves using one’s affects as a mode of critique. For phenomenology to open up to cross-disciplinary dialogue, it must recognize that critique is sufficient at the level of self reflection and transformation of habitual modes of feeling and perceiving. I read Aimé Césaire epic poem, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, as a case study that demonstrates my methodology of using affect in critical phenomenological practice. I explicate how the rhetoric of disgust in this poem can catalyze a critical and ethically responsive phenomenological reduction for myself, a white reader. I claim that this experience of disgust in reading resonates with Merleau-Ponty’s (1945) account of wonder, vis-à-vis Eugen Fink, as “perhaps the best formulation of the reduction,” a reflection that “reveals the world as strange and paradoxical.” Guiding this methodology is Louise Rosenblatt’s (1969) transactional theory of literary criticism, inspired by John Dewey’s pragmatism. Through my case study I clarify how this theory provides a framework for engaging phenomenology with lived aesthetic experience to facilitate transformative affective work on one’s affective commitments.

BIO: I am a masters student at NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study. My individualized course of study examines affects-broadly including sentiments, feelings, sensations- as they are theorized across disciplines such as in philosophy and literature. I build from my undergraduate degree in philosophy at Fordham University in which I began studying philosophy of emotions and contemporary French philosophy. Though my central discipline is in philosophy, I develop my research on affect studies and critical phenomenology through my graduate coursework in literary criticism and critical race and gender theory.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Mar 13, 2021

Jamie Murphy - ‘The Angry is Always Right’

Saturday Mar 13, 2021

Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Jamie Murphy, University College Cork, Ireland.

ABSTRACT: According to a widespread assumption in contemporary literature on the philosophy of emotions, it is possible for a subject to elicit anger for no reason (Nussbaum 2016, Huebner 2018, Cherry 2018, Callard 2018). This talk aims to reject this claim by arguing for the opposite idea: it is impossible for an agent to get angry for no reason.

The talk is organized in three parts. Part 1 gives a brief outline of how anger is viewed in contemporary literature, and presents the assumption that anger can occur for no reason. Part 2 rejects this claim: anger must come about from a reason. First, I distinguish between a reason and a cause for an emotion by showing that a reason can be either justified or unjustified, whereas a cause either exists or not. A cause will always become a justified reason for the angry subject. The reason has the potential to be unjustified when it is presented to the angry subject’s peers. I build on this by introducing warranted anger and vindicated anger. Warranted anger is anger which has a justified reason. Vindicated anger is anger which, if presented to the angry subject’s peers, would be seen as warranted anger. In part 3 I posit and explain the idea of “Vapid Anger”. Vapid Anger is anger the subject of which knows they shouldn’t feel, but feel it anyway. It is controlled by an agent’s mood and overall disposition to anger, thereby determining the likelihood they will get angry at something “vapid”. I introduce this concept as it is a response to potential attacks against my argument; it shows that one can still have a reason for being angry but are aware that, if their reason was presented to a group of their peers, would be seen as unjustified.

BIO: I attained my BA with a major in philosophy in 2016. I graduated with my MA in philosophy in 2018. My MA dissertation was focused on moral responsibility, specifically on compatibilist thought. Both of these degrees were attained in University College Cork (UCC). After 2 years away from academia I returned to begin my PhD in September 2019. My thesis is focused solely on anger as an emotion, in an attempt to give a full account of all types of anger.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Mar 06, 2021

Natalia Burakowska & Danielle Petherbridge - ‘An Embodied-Cognitive Approach to Dementia’

Saturday Mar 06, 2021

This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Natalia Burakowska & Danielle Petherbridge. Dr. Petherbridge is Assistant Professor in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin; and Burakowska is a PhD student in Philosophy at University College Dublin. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.

ABSTRACT: Dementia is a complex disease that is most often framed in terms of diminished cognitive capacity or neurodegeneration, together with assumptions about the loss of personhood, memory and communication skills. As a consequence, forms of dementia assessment and care are often based on a cognitive account of personhood and framed in terms of cognitive and linguistic capacities. One of the central arguments of this paper is that such accounts of personhood are one-sided and neglect the important embodied dimensions of persons both as subjects in the world and in their interactions with others. More significantly, drawing specifically on phenomenology, the research constructs an embodied-cognitive account of dementia that offers new insights not only into the lived experience of persons with dementia but also alternative forms of care. The paper begins by examining the appropriateness of an account of empathy in encounter with persons with dementia before investigating the importance of dynamic engagement that can give rise to embodied and relational capabilities and forms of communication. This has significant ramifications for forms of interaction and care, as well as existing policies, medical attitudes and diagnosis of dementia. Our aim in this paper is to: (a) offer an embodied-cognitive approach to dementia drawing on a phenomenology; (b) provide an account of the lived experience of persons with dementia that in turn informs policy and care; (c) explore alternative forms of expressivity and personhood informed by a phenomenological approach. This research offers an important phenomenological alternative to current research on dementia with implications for the understanding of dementia, as well as diagnosis and methods of care.

BIOS:

Dr. Petherbridge is Assistant Professor in the School of Philosophy at University College Dublin and Deputy-Director of the UCD Centre for Ethics in Public Life. Previously Dr. Petherbridge was an IRC Marie-Curie fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Columbia University, New York. Her primary research interests include the relation between perception, attention and affect; theories of intersubjectivity in phenomenology and social philosophy as well as embodied-cognitive approaches to illness. She is PI of a research project on embodied-cognitive accounts of dementia being undertaken in partnership with the Alzheimer Society of Ireland.

Natalia Burakowska is a PhD student in Philosophy at University College Dublin. She works in the areas of phenomenology, philosophy of mind and applied philosophy. Her doctoral work is focused on a phenomenological approach to dementia that conceptualizes it as both a cognitive and bodily condition, taking account of the lived experience of dementia, vulnerability and forms of ethical responsiveness and care.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Feb 27, 2021

Sophie Loidolt - ‘Order, Experience, and Critique: The Phenomenological Method in Political and Legal Theory’

Saturday Feb 27, 2021

Season five of our podcast features presentations from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. In this episode we release one of our keynote talks, that of Professor Sophie Loidolt, who focuses upon phenomenological method in political and legal theory. Loidolt is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Practical Philosophy, Technische Universität Darmstadt / Technical University of Darmstadt.

ABSTRACT: The talk investigates phenomenology’s possibilities to describe, reflect and critically analyse political and legal orders. It presents a “toolbox” of methodological reflections, tools and topics, by relating to the classics of the tradition and to the emerging movement of “critical phenomenology,” as well as by touching upon current issues such as experiences of rightlessness, experiences in the digital lifeworld, and experiences of the public sphere. It is argued that phenomenology provides us with a dynamic methodological framework that emphasizes correlational, co-constitutional, and interrelational structures and thus pays attention to modes of givenness, the making and unmaking of “world,” and, thereby, the inter/subjective, affective, and bodily constitution of meaning. In the case of political and legal orders, questions of power, exclusion, and normativity are central issues. By looking at “best practice” models such as Hannah Arendt’s analyses, I will elaborate on an analytical tool and flexible framework I call “spaces of meaning,” which phenomenologists can use and modify as they go along. In the current debates on political and legal issues, I see the main task of phenomenology in reclaiming experience as world-building and world-opening, also in a normative sense, and in demonstrating how structures and orders are lived while they condition and form spaces of meaning. If we want to understand, criticize, act, or change something, this subjective and intersubjective perspective will remain indispensable.

BIO: Sophie Loidolt is professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. She is a member of the “Young Academy” of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and “Recurrent Visiting Professor” at CFS Copenhagen. During her time and education at University of Vienna (PhD, habilitation, assistant professor), she was a visiting researcher at the Husserl-Archives of KU Leuven and at The New School for Social Research in New York. Her work centers on issues in the fields of phenomenology, political and legal philosophy, and ethics, as well as transcendental philosophy and philosophy of mind. Her books include Anspruch und Rechtfertigung. Eine Theorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Springer 2009), Einführung in die Rechtsphänomenologie (Mohr Siebeck 2010), and Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity (Routledge 2017).

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Friday Feb 26, 2021

Sophie Loidolt Interviewed by Jessie Stanier & Hannah Berry

Friday Feb 26, 2021

Season five of the British Society for Phenomenology Podcast features presentations from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. In this episode, however, we present an interview given by Professor Sophie Loidolt, one of our keynotes from the event. Loidolt is Professor of Philosophy and Chair of Practical Philosophy, Technische Universität Darmstadt / Technical University of Darmstadt. The interview was recorded in August of this year, and first released to conference attendees. The interviewers are Jessie Stanier and Hannah Berry from the event team.

In the interview Loidolt talks about reading groups, armchair philosophy, music, film and all things phenomenology. In the next episode we will release her paper from the event, ‘Order, Experience, and Critique: The Phenomenological Method in Political and Legal Theory’.

BIOS:

Sophie Loidolt is professor of philosophy at the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. She is a member of the “Young Academy” of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and “Recurrent Visiting Professor” at CFS Copenhagen. During her time and education at University of Vienna (PhD, habilitation, assistant professor), she was a visiting researcher at the Husserl-Archives of KU Leuven and at The New School for Social Research in New York. Her work centers on issues in the fields of phenomenology, political and legal philosophy, and ethics, as well as transcendental philosophy and philosophy of mind. Her books include Anspruch und Rechtfertigung. Eine Theorie des rechtlichen Denkens im Anschluss an die Phänomenologie Edmund Husserls (Springer 2009), Einführung in die Rechtsphänomenologie (Mohr Siebeck 2010), and Phenomenology of Plurality: Hannah Arendt on Political Intersubjectivity (Routledge 2017).

Jessie Stanier is a PhD student at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter. She takes an engaged approach to her transdisciplinary research on phenomenology, ageing, and older age, collaborating with publics affected by the lived realities of ageing and caring. In her PhD thesis, she aims to shed new light on normative determinants of ageing and how they affect lived experiences and possibilities for older people. She is co-supervised by Dr Robin Durie, Dr Felicity Thomas, and Prof Luna Dolezal. She completed her MA in Philosophy at KU Leuven, Belgium, in 2018.

Hannah Berry has recently completed her Ph.D. on a linguistic and phenomenological analysis of empathy. She has had a lectureship at Liverpool Hope University in Sociolinguistics and has taught at various institutions such as the University of Liverpool and Manchester Metropolitan University. She is now working in the adult education sector.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Dec 26, 2020

Shaun Gallagher, interviewed by Hannah Berry & Jessie Stanier

Saturday Dec 26, 2020

Welcome to the 100th episode of the BSP Podcast. To celebrate this milestone we have a specially recorded interview with Professor Shaun Gallagher (University of Memphis, USA, and University of Wollongong, Australia). Gallagher is interviewed by Jessica Stanier (Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter) and Hannah Berry (BSP Secretary).

“I’m really happy we’ve reached 100 episodes!” – writes Dr Matt Barnard, founder and editor of the BSP Podcast. “I started the podcast because I wanted to amplify the voice of our delegates at conferences. Phenomenology is an important movement in thought, challenging us to listen harder, and engage with the world and human experiences. As such, I’m delighted that Shaun Gallagher, who has done so much to advocate for phenomenology and communicate it clearly, agreed to be interviewed for this special episode. I’m also super grateful to Jessica Stanier and Hannah Berry. They came up with really interesting questions, leading to a unique and open discussion that I really enjoyed editing. I am sure our listeners will enjoy it too.”

BIOS:

Shaun Gallagher is the Lillian and Morrie Moss Professor of Excellence in Philosophy at the University of Memphis, USA, and Professorial Fellow at the School of Liberal Arts, University of Wollongong, Australia. His research is interdisciplinary and focuses on embodied cognition and the phenomenology of self, action, intention, and social interaction, He held the Humboldt Foundation Anneliese Maier Research Fellowship (2012-18). He has been Honorary Professor at Tromsø University (Norway), Durham University (UK) and the University of Copenhagen (Denmark). He has held visiting research positions at MRC: Centre for Cognition and Brain Sciences, Cambridge University; Ecole Normale Supériure, Lyon; CREA and Ecole Normale Supériure, Paris; Humboldt University, Berlin; Keeble College, Oxford University; and Sapienza - University of Rome. His publications include Action and Interaction (Oxford 2020); The Phenomenological Mind -3rd ed (Routledge 2020); Enactivist Interventions: Rethinking the Mind (Oxford 2017); The Neuro-phenomenology of Awe and Wonder (Palgrave Macmillan 2015); Phenomenology (Palgrave Macmillan 2012; 2nd ed in 2021); How the Body Shapes the Mind (Oxford 2005); Hermeneutics and Education (SUNY Press 1992); and as editor, the Oxford Handbook of the Self (2011); and co-editor The Oxford Handbook of 4E Cognition (2018). He is editor-in-chief of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. His books and articles have been translated into 14 different languages, and have been cited more than 29,000 times (Google Scholar). He served as principle investigator on grants from the European Science Foundation, Marie Curie Actions, the National Science Foundation, the Templeton Foundation; and has been co-PI on awards from the Australian Research Council, Marie Curie, Humboldt Foundation, and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK).

Hannah Berry has recently completed her doctoral thesis on empathy from the University of Liverpool. The thesis is called ‘The Shoe Never Fits: a phenomenological revision of empathy and intersubjectivity’ and offers a critical analysis of phenomenological, psychological and biological descriptions of empathy and proposes a development to Husserl’s theory of analogising apprehension in order to describe an interpersonal experience that takes into account sociability as well as the subjective experience of self and other. Her interests are in psycho- and socio-linguistics, forensic linguistics, pragmatics, phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Hannah is the current secretary for the British Society for Phenomenology and is the lead tutor of the WEA’s North West refugee education programme.

Jessie Stanier is a PhD student at the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health at the University of Exeter. She takes an engaged approach to her study of phenomenology, ageing, and older age by collaborating with various people affected by the lived realities of ageing and caring. In her PhD thesis, she aims to shed new light on normative determinants of ageing and how they affect lived experiences and possibilities for older people. She co-hosted this year’s BSP conference online, and she is currently co-editing a Special Issue of Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology on ‘Pandemic Politics & Phenomenology’.

Sunday Dec 20, 2020

Hannah Berry - ‘We Need to Talk About Ted’

Sunday Dec 20, 2020

To close the first series of releases of season five of our podcast, we continue with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Hannah Berry (University of Liverpool). Hannah was one of the organisers of the 2020 annual conference, serves as Secretary of the BSP, and will be back next week for our 100th episode of the BSP Podcast conducting a special interview to celebrate the milestone. Before that, here is Hannah telling us why ‘We Need to Talk About Ted’.

ABSTRACT: There is an increasing fascination with serial killers, morbid crime and the general macabre within popular culture and contemporary society. It has often been argued that our enjoyment of sad films; the act of slowing down when driving to view a crash site; looking at a dead animal in the park; listening to interviews with serial killers, and even; eating meat are “survivalist” tendencies, as well as a means of reinforcing pro-social values (Burkeman, 2012). We indulge these curiosities and watch highly rated television programs such as Making a Murderer, Unabomber, Mindhunter, Criminal Minds, The Fall, True Detective, etc. These fictional and non-fictional narratives examine the intricate details of the crime, the history, the criminal investigation and the prosecution of serial killers and are often supplemented with a clinical psychologist’s reflection of why the perpetrator acted in this way. Bonn claims that there appears to be an innate human tendency to identify or empathise with all things –whether good or bad –including serial killers (2014), and this may be why we are fascinated with them.

I will present a corpus analysis and critical discourse analysis of interviews with two serial killers: Ted Bundy (an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped and murdered women during the 1970s) and Ted Kaczynski (also known as the Unabomber: an American domestic terrorist and anarchist who killed 3 people in the late 1970s and 80s). I will analyse the linguistics devices the criminals used when: referring to the victims; the use of agency in descriptions of the crimes, and; present a phenomenological description that aids my linguistic analysis in order to track the awareness of the embodied other and the level of consciousness of the others’ subjectivity throughout the interviews. I will include a social commentary on how the criminals were presented to the public and how the language used to describe them shaped the popular conception of “serial killer”.

BIO: Hannah Berry has recently completed her doctoral thesis on empathy from the University of Liverpool. The thesis is called 'The Shoe Never Fits: a phenomenological revision of empathy and intersubjectivity' and offers a critical analysis of phenomenological, psychological and biological descriptions of empathy and proposes a development to Husserl's theory of analogising apprehension in order to describe an interpersonal experience that takes into account sociability as well as the subjective experience of self and other. Her interests are in psycho- and socio-linguistics, forensic linguistics, pragmatics, phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Hannah is the current secretary for the British Society for Phenomenology and is the lead tutor of the WEA's North West refugee education programme.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/

Saturday Dec 19, 2020

Nicole Miglio and Jessica Stanier - ‘Painful experience and constitution of the intersubjective self: a critical-phenomenological analysis’

Saturday Dec 19, 2020

To begin to close the first series of releases of season five of our podcast, we continue with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Nicole Miglio (San Raffaele University) and Jessica Stanier (Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, University of Exeter). Jessie was one of the organisers of the 2020 annual conference, set the theme of ‘Engaged Phenomenology’, and will be back next week for our 100th episode of the BSP Podcast conducting a special interview to celebrate the milestone. Before that, here are Jessie and Nicole exploring ‘Painful experience and constitution of the intersubjective self’.

ABSTRACT: Pain is ordinary and integral to our experiential topography; a ‘background texture’ of pain characterises our whole lives. I flinch away from a hot pan as it brushes against my arm at the stove. I absent-mindedly rub my shoulder, relieving the dull ache from sitting at my desk too long. If we consider these routine and mundane ways in which pain features in everyday experience, it becomes clear that - far from presenting only through unusual and excruciating events - pain is familiar and, in many ways, vital for navigating the world. Pain draws our attention to our bodies as they pertain to our surroundings. And while everyday pain is often a far cry from the overwhelming agony of extreme injury, it is nonetheless recognisable as pain across these various contexts.

Pain relief and treatment is a huge global pharmaceutical industry, based on a medical conception of pain as a set of quantifiable and calculable conditions in a physiological body. This notion of pain fails to account for social and political contexts which constitute subjects in pain, as they are alternately marginalised, disbelieved, prioritised, or cared for; the status of their painful experience garners significance in this relational intersubjective context.

By taking a critical-phenomenological approach, this paper seeks to critique and further reductionistic conceptions of pain by better accounting for the complex contextual and intersubjective variation of painful experiences. We articulate how painful experience involves several phenomenological levels – from the hyletic to the intersubjective – differentially affected by the subject’s social, political, and cultural situation. We suggest that this critical-phenomenological account might be integrated into lifeworld-based approaches to care and treatment of pain, through social and political engagement, as well as raising some critical points of investigation for phenomenology in itself.

This presentation is based on a book chapter due to be published soon in Phenomenology of Bioethics and Technoethics; ed. S. Ferrarello (Springer).

BIOS:

Nicole Miglio is a PhD Student at San Raffaele University (Milan). She’s carrying her doctoral research in several institutions, in the U.S. (George Washington University and The University of San Francisco), in the UK (University of Exeter), and in Israel (University of Haifa). Her background is in theoretical philosophy and aesthetics, but she is working especially in the field of Feminist phenomenology. She is currently writing her PhD dissertation, which is exploring the many philosophical facets of the gestating subjectivity, considering both the classical accounts (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, Arendt, Beauvoir) and the contemporary ways to think the experiential complexity of the gestational relationship. She is co-supervised by Prof. Chiara Cappelletto (Aesthetics), prof. Francesca de Vecchi (Phenomenology and Social ontology), and Prof. Marjolein Oele (Contemporary European Philosophy).

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/