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

Sunday Aug 16, 2020

Francesca Brencio - “Fill the gap”. A phenomenological perspective of exercising psychiatry

Sunday Aug 16, 2020

The BSP Podcast turns to a paper from Francesca Brencio, University of Seville, Spain. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: Phenomenology has recently contributed to illuminate medicine and in setting up different theoretical frameworks. The scope of applying phenomenology to healthcare is not to select symptoms in view of a nosographical diagnosis, rather is to recover the underlying characteristic modification that keeps the manifold of phenomena meaningfully interconnected in the life-world of the person.

This contribution intends to show how the phenomenological method applied to psychiatry implies a new understanding of psychopathological phenomena, conceived as a coherent way of being in the world, and its peculiarities lie in recovering the underlying characteristic modification that keeps the manifold of phenomena meaningfully interconnected in the life-world of the person, in describing and understanding the inner experience of a human being, of its suffering and also the limitation of its freedom. In doing so, what is required is a radical move away from an “objective” body-orientated psychiatry which is grounded on the idea of fixing something broken instead of understanding why existence itself can collapse and loose its meanings. Advances in philosophy and neuroscience have suggested that mental symptoms are not ‘things’, rather they have a wider, deeper, personal, and cultural sense and a fluidity that may not be reduced to the taxonomy used in relation to the organic dimensions of disorders. Patient’s existence (as well as clinicians’ one) is embodied (physically) and embedded (socially and culturally) and psychopathological phenomena are specific ways of this embodiment and embeddedness. This means that we cannot simply classify them as something that happen to an objective body, a purely physiological condition that is explainable entirely in causal or mechanistic terms.

A phenomenologically-informed psychiatry can “fill the gap” between clinical meanings and existential ones and can overcome evidence-based approaches by finding a common language in which words can show relations and not merely signify objects.

BIO: Francesca Brencio (PhD) is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Seville, and Member of the Phenomenology and Mental Health Network at the St Catherine’s College (University of Oxford). Her field of research is mainly related to Heidegger Studies, Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, Philosophy of Psychiatry and Philosophy of Religion. She has published in Italian, English, German and Spanish on a wide range of topics, in several collaborative book projects and philosophical and medical journals. She is one of the invited contributors to the The Oxford Handbook of Phenomenological Psychopathology (OUP, 2019).

The ‘British Society for Phenomenology Annual Conference 2019 – the Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’ was held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester, UK, 5 – 7 September, 2019: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/conference/

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 Aug 15, 2020

William Large - Atheism of the Word: A Genealogy of the Concept of God

Saturday Aug 15, 2020

Season four of the BSP Podcast continues with a paper from William Large, University of Gloucestershire. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: This paper offers a broad historical analysis of atheism and a new conceptual definition. It describes three kinds of atheism: atheism of being, atheism of the idea, and atheism of the word. The first is an atheism of a metaphysical order and science; the second an atheism of morality; and the third an atheism of the community and the word. Each atheism comes in an historical sequence but are conceptually distinct. In terms of the traditional divisions of philosophy, the first atheism is ontology, the second is ethical, and the third is aesthetic and political. This historical sequence is not a necessary one, but contingent, and because each atheism is conceptually distinct, they can emerge at any time. Cutting across this horizontal historical series of atheism, is a vertical distinction between essence and existence. Theism responds to atheism through the passion of religion which sets the next form in motion. When, philosophy says, ‘God is being’, religion responds, ‘God is a hidden’. If philosophy replies, ‘God is an idea’, then religion responds again, ‘faith is the passion of a life’. Only in the last form is the dialogue between philosophy and religion reversed. Religion says, ‘faith is the word’, but philosophy responds, ‘the word is spoken by no-one’. The last atheism has a political consequence. What binds a community without a word?

BIO: William Large is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham. He is the author of Maurice Blanchot [co-authored] (Routledge, 2001), Ethics and the Ambiguity of Writing: Emmanuel Levinas and Maurice Blanchot (Clinamen, 2005), Heidegger’s Being and Time (Edinburgh University Press, 2007), Levinas ’Totality and Infinity: A Reader’s Guide (Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), and numerous articles in continental philosophy. He was president of the British Society of Phenomenology from 2010-14.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Aug 08, 2020

Pablo Andreu - Death as an “Ontological Infidelity”

Saturday Aug 08, 2020

Our podcast turns to a paper from Pablo Andreu, University of Zaragoza, Spain, and University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: The following paper aims to open the reader to a comprehension of death from a phenomenological and hermeneutical point of view. Set against the background work of Max Scheler and Martini Heidegger’s analysis of the phenomenon, we adopt Paul Louis Landsberg’s interpretation of death as an “ontological infidelity”. Such definition of death deals with a fundamental and original predisposition to believe, which we recognize as faith. This faith, which stand as a complete openness to the other, is an essential constituent of human existence, without which we cannot understand Heidegger’s Angst. As such, we postulate that this faith is ontologically prior to Heidegger’s anxiety. As Landsberg says, “the anguish of death, and not only the pain of dying, would be incomprehensible of the fundamental structure of our being did not include the existential postulate of something beyond” (Landsberg, 2009, p. 25). We defend that by the braking of the connections entangled through this essential openness, the person is striped from the meaning of her existence and therefore thrown to a state of dead. This implies that there is no possible understanding of the phenomenon of death without a comprehension of our relation with and to the other. As a result, first, we aim to give a specific reading on the phenomenon of death, that is not to be confused with our mortal condition – so in Scheler and Heidegger – and, second, shed some light unto the actual medical debate concerning the state of being of patients in situations that cannot be clearly determined neither as alive nor dead.

BIO: Pablo Ilian Toso Andreu is a PhD Student at the University of Zaragoza, Spain, currently staying at University College Dublin (UCD) in Ireland. Mainly focused on phenomenology, and specifically the phenomenology of death, Mr. Andreu has also approached analytic philosophy through the Master’s program offered by the University of Barcelona.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Aug 01, 2020

Marco Di Feo - The Human Right to Family Reunification

Saturday Aug 01, 2020

Our podcast turns to a paper from Marco Di Feo, Vita-Salute San Raffaele University of Milan. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: All people, to the extent that they wish, have the right to be fully integrated into the social world in which they live, regardless of their institutional status (citizen, immigrant, refugee, etc.). The integration is a very complex process, which includes at least three essential levels of the social life: the community one, that is, the level of interpersonal bonds (i.e. sentimental, friendship, etc.); the territorial one, that is, the level of social interactions (i.e those that depend on a social role, or a profession, etc.); and the political one, that is, the possibility of taking part in the collective political life (expressing opinions, voting, etc.). The phenomenological analysis of the essential forms of social interaction shows the peculiarity of each different level of integration. The crucial point on which I intend to pay attention is the following: each democratic country that welcomes an immigrant must create the conditions for her/his fully successful social integration. The hospitality of the immigrants is intrinsically connected to the duty of making them members of the society, at all three levels of the social life. I specifically intend to deal the theme of family reunifications within this conceptual horizon. Since family ties are the central nucleus of the community weaving, and since every person has the right to live in relation to her own reference community context, then the family reunification must be considered an inalienable right of every person who is welcomed in a new country. This right cannot be subordinated to any other type of evaluation, of economic, bureaucratic or political nature, because it is a human right. Only by guaranteeing a family context of belonging, institutions can avoid situations of social degradation, which are linked to conditions of loneliness and social isolation.

BIO: I was born in Milan, Italy, 46 years ago. Philosophy has always been my passion, but before dedicating myself to it, I felt the need to grow. I worked in a bank; then I changed radically my life, going to work in a social farm. Ten years ago I moved to Switzerland to work as social worker. During these years I achieved my degree with a thesis on the collective subjects from a phenomenological perspective. Actually I am working with young refugees and ending my second year of PhD. In my life path work and study are linked and grow together.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jul 25, 2020

Botsa Katara - Reassessing the Super-crip Stereotype

Saturday Jul 25, 2020

Season four of the BSP Podcast continues with a paper from Botsa Katara, Durham University. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: The term “super-crip” can be construed as a misleading twist on the derogatory term crippled. The latter signifies the dire condition of human frailty, limitations of embodiment, and a life without possibilities, while the latter is emblematic of overcoming those limitations to such a preposterous extent that not only demonises, and annihilates the experience of living with physical disabilities but also heralds an insidious discourse of superlative athletic vigour, and prowess. This paper aims to demonstrate that to reduce the body into a functional machinery which might be repaired and augmented is to disavow the intricate mechanisms of the body-mind connect that are orientated towards intentionality, affectivity, attunement, proprioception, and kinesthesis. Under the theoretical lens of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, Gallagher’s How the Body Shapes the Mind, and Carel’s Phenomenology of Illness, this paper shall analyse of the depiction of physical impairments in literary fiction, and memoirs. Following Carel’s conception of “epistemic injustice” it shall delineate the exigent need to incorporate felt experiences of disability in the wider cultural domain, thereby promulgating an informed and empathetic approach towards disability that adheres neither to the derogatory conception of the crippled nor the superhuman creation of the super-crip.

BIO: My name is Botsa Katara, second year PhD in English literature and Medical Humanities, from Durham University. My research focuses on the depiction of impaired movement in the literary works Beckett, Coetzee, and Kelmann. I am also looking at graphic memoirs, and life writings of amputees, and prosthetics that serve as counter narratives to the contemporary culture of the ‘super-crip’. I hold a Master’s degree in Modernity and Literature from the University of Edinburgh where my thesis focussed on identity conflict, desire, and domination in cancer patients. I have worked as a trainee at a prosthesis centre in New Delhi, India, where my work centered on closely observing young amputee rehabilitation.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jul 18, 2020

Pablo Fernandez Velasco - Disorientation and Self-consciousness: A Phenomenological Inquiry

Saturday Jul 18, 2020

Our podcast turns to a paper from Pablo Fernandez Velasco, Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’études cognitives, ENS, EHESS, CNRS, PSL; and University College London. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: The present paper explores the phenomenology of disorientation and its relationship with self-consciousness. Section 1 discusses previous literature on the links between self-location and self-consciousness and proposes a distinction between minimal self-location (which requires only an ego-centric frame of reference) and integrated self-location (which requires the integration of egocentric and allocentric frames of reference). The double aim of the paper is, on the one hand, to use this distinction (between minimal and integrated self-location) to deepen our understanding of spatial disorientation and, on the other, to use the phenomenology of disorientation to elucidate the role that self-location plays in shaping self-consciousness. Section 2 starts by looking at the experience of being “turned around”, which is a common experience of disorientation, and then expands to disorientation episodes related to the other two egocentric axes: experiences of being “left-right reversed”, and of being “turned upside-down”. This leads to the conclusion that integrated self-location is transmodal and depends on all three egocentric axes, and that disorientation destabilizes this integrated self-location. Section 3 explores a corpus of reports of disorientation episodes and highlights four key characteristics of these experiences (anxiety, vulnerability, confusion and diminishment) and their links to self-consciousness, focusing on the transformations in both the lived body and the experience of space. This phenomenological analysis reveals that during disorientation, the body-space shrinks, and the horizon of experience becomes more uncertain, leading to anxiety and a feeling of unfamiliarity. The central thesis of this paper is that during disorientation a destabilization of integrated self-location results in a diminished form of self-consciousness. Section 4 concludes with a summary of the key points of the paper and points to future directions of research.

BIO: The central aim of my current research is to explore the varieties and different dimensions of disorientation from the subjective side, in order to produce a characterisation of the phenomenon that is compatible with both empirical data and data about the subjective experience of disorientation, and to use disorientation as a vantage point to understand some of the complexities of spatial cognition and of the human mind at large.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jul 11, 2020

Andreas Sandner - ‘Visible Odours? On the Issue of Visuocentricism in “Olfactory Austerity”

Saturday Jul 11, 2020

Season four of the BSP Podcast continues with a paper from Andreas Sandner, Department of Philosophy at University of Koblenz-Landau. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: It is widely held in analytic philosophy of mind and cognition that olfactory perception – first and foremost – represents odours if it represents anything at all. Despite some controversies on the very nature of those odours we encounter in olfactory perceptual experience, the vast majority of today’s philosophers hold that the intentional objects of olfactory perception are the odorous emanations of so-called source objects – ordinary concrete things. So, broadly speaking, most discussants account for some version of the principle of ‘olfactory austerity’: When we smell we perceive nothing but odours, and never do we (directly) smell particular objects. After depicting the main reasons for adopting such a view especially within a chiefly representationalist framework, I will examine one of the alleged benefits a bit more carefully. Namely I will address the anti-visuocentricism in austere theories of olfactory objects. It has been argued frequently that the view of olfactory austerity reveals our visuocentric biases and guides us to overcome them in theorising perception. In short, the idea goes pretty much as follows: Those who think that we could smell ordinary objects in olfactory experience just like we can see these objects in visual experience simply disregard the missing aspects of objecthood in what is really smelled there, particularly the missing spatial structure. To attribute such aspects to pure olfactory experience then would mean to fall for the supremacy of vision and to only infer the particular source object by the smelled odour from memory or recollection. The main goal of my talk will come down to contrasting the so reproached visuocentricism of a source-object-theory of olfactory objects with the visuocentricism within the view of olfactory austerity itself, as it is still at work at the very core of this approach in that the criteria of ‘objecthood’ are obviously stipulated by means of the ordinary objects in visual perception. What is at stake in this comparison is to extrapolate visuocentricism as a crucial structure of perceptual consciousness – at least for the sighted – and hence accounting for the supremacy of vision as a fact instead of a fallacious bias.

BIO: From 2007 to 2015 I studied philosophy, sociology and communication science at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena. I received a bachelor's degree in 2011 with a thesis on the theory of causes in Plato's Phaedo and a master's degree in 2015 with a thesis on Kant's criticism of Berkeley's immaterialism. Since 2016 I have been a research assistant at the Institute of Philosophy in Landau where I hold seminars and am writing a dissertation on the phenomenology of olfactory perception. In this context, I also organized a small international conference on perception and the senses in continental and analytic philosophy last year.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jul 04, 2020

Matteo Valdarchi - The circle and the origin. An interpretation of Heidegger's Habilitationsschrift

Saturday Jul 04, 2020

The BSP Podcast turns to a paper from Matteo Valdarchi, who has studied philosophy at the Pontificial Gregorian University and at the University of Roma Tre. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: Since his early stages, the young Heidegger embraced with fervour the Husserlian phenomenological method (at least the one contained in the Logische Untersuchungen), although he immediately kept his distance from it, introducing a new way of doing phenomenology, independent and more fundamental. Not surprisingly, the phenomenological project that arises from his early works is called «Ursprungswissenschaft». But where can we find the seeds of this “science”? Usually, those can be identified in the course of the Kriegsontsemester (1919). The aim of this paper is to show that the very beginning of this project is, instead, in his post-doctoral dissertation, Die Kategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotus. The Habilitationsschrift unfolds a movement that starts from the exclusion of the Aristotelian-scholastics “metaphysics” from the question of categories (namely, of being), in favour of the immanence of the subjectivity in the judgement. With this first movement, the meaning of ‘being’ is radically transformed, changing from “being that actually exists” to “being that’s valid” [gilt] of the copula. The second movement (or counter-move) shows the intentional disposition of the logical setting, enlightening the material principle that determines logical forms: the categories of meaning that weave the sphere of language. It is at this level that the young Heidegger, although adopting the teaching of the IV research, already allows the origin of the logic to emerge from a more fundamental field, that is language, in which ‘being’ neither it’s a “is” nor it is valid, but it means. However here the language isn’t entangled in the theoretical (“circular” in 1919) subjectivity’s tangles, but it opens the way to a new understanding of the subjectivity, of the «historischer Geist». In conclusion, Heidegger’s original appropriation of the phenomenological method lies in understanding of the essence of language, as field of the subjectivity’s historically living movement.

BIO: Matteo Valdarchi studied philosophy at the Pontificial Gregorian University (until 2016) and at the University of Roma Tre (until 2018). His research area includes phenomenology and hermeneutics, particularly Heidegger's thinking. He has taken part in two national conferences, at the 62° and at the 63° Convegno di Ricerca Filosofica organized by Centro Studi Filosofici di Gallarate.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jun 27, 2020

Katherine Burn - Recalibrating the Contemporary: Reading the phenomenology of shame in Metamodernism

Saturday Jun 27, 2020

Season four of the BSP Podcast continues with a paper from Katherine Burn, Manchester Metropolitan University. The recording is taken from our 2019 Annual Conference, ‘The Theory and Practice of Phenomenology’.

ABSTRACT: Contemporary British fiction is situated within a moment of flux, ‘made from a different fabric and holds a different elasticity’ (Boxall, 2013). Recent advancements in shame studies address the philosophical turn towards a phenomenological understanding of the emotion as ‘everyday life feels increasingly uncanny’ (Hinton and Willemsen, 2018). The intersection between shame and contemporary fiction connects within the nascent field of metamodernism in which we can identify ‘a structure of feeling that emerges from, and reacts to, the postmodern’ (Van den Akker and Vermeulen, 2017). We are living in shameless times wherein it is possible to feel a second-hand shame towards those whose politics shamelessly exploit us as subjects of late capitalism, impacting our impression of everyday life and reconstructing our sense of the authentic. Yet, this space of the shame of shamelessness has largely remained ‘invisible’ (Weiss, 2018) within contemporary literary studies even though our actions ‘inevitably reverberate beyond ourselves affecting not only others but also the larger society in which we live’ (Weiss, 2018). To fully understand this ontological position, we must utilise Heidegger’s fundamental ontology to reorient our understanding of the everyday nature of autonomous shame and its representation within Tom McCarthy’s Remainder and Eley Williams’ Attrib. Reflecting on Rudi Visker’s claim that, ‘shame can thus be seen to occupy a structurally similar place – a topos – to anxiety in Heidegger’s ontology’ (Visker, 2004), this paper seeks to explore a Heideggerian notion of shame as disclosive mechanism between ‘unowned existence’ (Stolorow, 2011) and authentic individuation. Twenty-first century British fiction thus reveals the reconstructive force within moments of self-evaluation accompanying autonomous shame as radical witnesses against the shameless composition of the contemporary moment, fortifying the alignment between phenomenology and literary theory.

BIO: Katherine Burn is in the second year of her AHRC funded PhD at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on the intersection between shame and metamodernism, utilising traditional phenomenology to investigate the reconstructive force of shame in terms of form and periodisation of the novel. Katherine has continuously presented as part of the AHRC Metamodernism network and has recently been appointed postgraduate representative of the national English Shared Futures conference due to take place in 2020.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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

Saturday Jun 20, 2020

Dylan Trigg - Who is the Subject of Birth?

Saturday Jun 20, 2020

Welcome back to the British Society for Phenomenology Podcast. Season four now continues with recordings from our 2019 Annual Conference. To kick off, here is a recording of one of our keynotes, Dylan Trigg, FWF Lise Meitner Senior Fellow in the Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna

ABSTRACT: In this talk, I attempt a phenomenological analysis of childbirth as a strange event using Merleau-Ponty’s concept of anonymity. The concept of anonymity in Merleau-Ponty refers to how our bodily existence is constituted by a Nature outside of ourselves. Such a formulation allows him to explain how perception is both general and singular in the same measure, how temporality can be contemporaneous and immemorial, and how the body is both one’s own while at the same time marking a prehistory that is never entirely my own. My point of departure for thinking through the issue of birth and anonymity begins from the conviction that Merleau-Ponty’s account of anonymity tends to privilege themes of integrity and synthesis while neglecting how anonymity can serve as a threat or rupture to the unity of selfhood, especially in the context of limit-experiences, not least childbirth. I contend that the concept of anonymity helps us to understand how childbirth is an irreducibly strange event. This is evident in at least two claims that tend to populate accounts of childbirth. First, the strangeness accompanying the sense of leaving one’s body behind, or, otherwise letting the body do its own thing. Second, the sense of strangeness accompanying the first encounter with the baby upon successful delivery. I take both of these aspects of childbirth seriously, treating them here phenomenologically as being instructive not only of uniqueness of childbirth but also telling us something important about bodily life more generally, especially in terms of who the subject of perceptual life, and thus childbirth, is.

BIO: Dr Dylan Trigg is an FWF Lise Meitner Senior Fellow at University of Vienna, Department of Philosophy. He has previously held research and teaching positions at the University of Memphis, University College Dublin, and Husserl Archives, École Normale Supérieure. He earned is PhD at the University of Sussex (2009), MA at the University of Sussex (2005), and BA at the University of London, Birkbeck College (2004). Trigg is the author of several books, including: Topophobia: a Phenomenology of Anxiety (2016); The Thing: a Phenomenology of Horror (2014); and The Memory of Place: a Phenomenology of the Uncanny (2012). With Dorothée Legrand, he is co-editor of Unconsciousness Between Phenomenology and Psychoanalysis (2017). His research concerns phenomenology and existentialism; philosophies of subjectivity and embodiment; aesthetics and philosophies of art; and philosophies of space and place.

You can check out our forthcoming events here:

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