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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.
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 May 22, 2021
Saturday May 22, 2021
Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Michael Fitzgerald, Bruyère Research Institute. Fitzgerald’s co-authors are Esther Shoemaker, Simon Fraser University; Lisa Boucher, University of Ottawa; Claire Kendall, Bruyère Research Institute.
ABSTRACT: This paper draws on Husserl’s notions of epoché and phenomenological reduction to interpret patient engagement in research. The epoché suspends or bracket naturalistic assumptions about the existence of the world, so as to allow phenomenological inquiry to focus on meaning or significance. Phenomenological reduction to the life-world, in turn, functions to restore the significance of the concrete world of basic life, i.e., to allow the phenomenologist access to the structures of meaning that are the basis for all inquiry (Luft 2004). In particular, it suspends the assumptions of the positive sciences. Patient engagement in research is an approach that includes patients and caregivers as partners on the research team. Arguably, this approach has become the standard for a wide variety, if not all, types of health research, driven in part by funding agency imperatives. Studies of this approach have argued that the significance of and motivation for engaging patients can be understood in terms of three sets of values: “moral or normative (e.g., empowerment and rights), instrumental or substantive (e.g., improving research quality), and process (e.g., having to do with research conduct)” (Kendall et al. 2018). However, further investigation is needed into the impact of patient engagement in research, and in particular how it affects health researchers’ own understanding of their research activities, exploration of which has so far been limited (Staley 2015; 2017). This paper proposes a phenomenological approach, in which patient engagement is seen as a transformation of research. We suggest that patient engagement in research can function as an epoché or even a type of reduction, by challenging researchers’ assumptions about the process of research. As with the life-world reduction, this can be seen as a way of resituating health research in the life-world, so as to expand and deepen its meaning and significance.
BIOS:
Michael Fitzgerald, Research Associate, Bruyère Research Institute, Ottawa, Canada, is a social phenomenologist with expertise in the phenomenology of international development. He works on projects on patient engagement, intersectionality and social accountability.
Esther Shoemaker, Postdoctoral Fellow, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, and Affiliated Scientist, Bruyère Research Institute, is a medical sociologist and early career researcher with sex- and gender-based mixed methods expertise in health services delivery for marginalized populations.
Lisa Boucher, PhD candidate in Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Ottawa, has expertise in participatory research approaches and both quantitative and qualitative methods. Her projects focus on highly marginalized populations, especially people who use illicit drugs.
Claire Kendall, a primary care physician and Clinical Scientist, Bruyère Research Institute and Associate Professor, University of Ottawa, where she is also Assistant Dean, Social Accountability, has expertise in health services research, cohort and administrative data linkages, systematic reviews, participatory approaches, qualitative research and practice-based interventions, with strong links to policy makers in primary care of marginalized populations.
This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/
You can check out our forthcoming events here:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/

Saturday May 15, 2021
Lucienne Spencer - ‘The phenomenological impact of hermeneutical injustice’
Saturday May 15, 2021
Saturday May 15, 2021
This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Lucienne Spencer, University of Bristol. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.
ABSTRACT: Fricker coined the term ‘hermeneutical injustice’ to highlight gaps in the interpretive framework where experiences of marginalised groups ought to be. Fricker illustrates hermeneutical injustice primarily through the victims of sexual harassment prior to the 1960s: without the term ‘sexual harassment’ at their disposal, the victim was not only incapable of discussing sexual harassment but also lacked the hermeneutical resources to fully make sense of the experience themselves. Fricker identifies a primary harm in hermeneutical injustice, through which the victim is undermined as a ‘knower’, and a secondary harm, through which the victim encounters practical disadvantages such as being unable to report sexual harassment. The purpose of this talk is to draw out a further, phenomenological harm that is overlooked in the literature. For Merleau-Ponty, speech expression is a manner of employing one’s body to engage with the world. Prior to expression, there lingers nothing in the mind but a ‘vague fever’. Only upon expression does this ‘vague fever’ transform into meaningful communication. As a gesture, speech expression does not signify meaning; rather words are saturated with meaning through their expression. Merleau-Ponty emphasises the role of speech expression as fundamental to the activity of projecting oneself toward the world. Hermeneutical resources are created and sustained by those who belong to privileged groups, and as such are designed to express their privileged experiences. Armed with speech expression, the hermeneutically advantaged move through the world with a pre-reflective openness. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty, I will argue that hermeneutical injustice causes a disruption of the patterns of embodiment in marginalised subjects, who are unable to engage with the world in the same way as their privileged counterparts. As speech expression is a fundamental aspect of embodiment, I will show that hermeneutical injustice constitutes a breakdown of the body-world synthesis for marginalised subjects.
BIO: I’m a third-year SWW-DTP funded PhD student at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Havi Carel (and co-supervised by Lisa El Refaie of Cardiff University). My research spans the areas of phenomenology, epistemic injustice and the philosophy of illness. Through my thesis, I hope to develop an account of the experience of psychiatric illness through Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of speech expression. Given my interest in widening participation, I have been involved in the ‘Insights into Philosophy’ scheme targeted at state schools across Bristol and am the Postgraduate Representative for the Society for Women in Philosophy UK.
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 May 08, 2021
Saturday May 08, 2021
Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Lewis Coyne, University of Exeter.
ABSTRACT: In recent years the phenomenological approach to bioethics has been rejuvenated and reformulated by, amongst others, the Swedish philosopher Fredrik Svenaeus. Building on the now-relatively mainstream phenomenological approach to health and illness, Svenaeus has sought to bring phenomenological insights to bear on the bioethical enterprise, with a view to critiquing and refining the ‘philosophical anthropology’ presupposed by the latter. In this talk I will offer a critical but sympathetic analysis of Svenaeus’ efforts, focusing on both his conception of the aims of phenomenological bioethics and the broadly Heideggerian methods he employs. Doing so reveals certain problems with both. I argue that the main aim of phenomenological bioethics as set out by Svenaeus needs to be reformulated, and that there are important oversights in his Heideggerian approach to reaching this end. I will conclude by arguing that to overcome the latter problem we should draw on the works of Max Scheler and Hans Jonas in future research.
BIO: I am an associate lecturer and honorary research fellow in philosophy at the University of Exeter, working at the intersection of existential phenomenology, practical ethics, and philosophical anthropology. My overarching interests are in the phenomena of life and death, and the ethics of technologically appropriating (human and non-human) nature. My publications on these topics include being co-editor of Moral Enhancement: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge University Press, 2018), and author of Hans Jonas: Life, Technology and the Horizons of Responsibility (Bloomsbury, 2020).
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 May 01, 2021
Margaret Steele - ‘Weight-Based Shame as an Affective Determinant of Health’
Saturday May 01, 2021
Saturday May 01, 2021
This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Margaret Steele, University College Cork. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.
ABSTRACT: Dolezal and Lyons (2017) have argued that shame may be an ‘affective determinant of health.’ They include weight as a potential site of such shame, and they recommend further research including, “Explore shame associated with different health problems and in different settings.” (2017, 262) In this paper, I take up that invitation, describing how shame might be a determinant of health for fat/obese people, due to its effects on their constitution of their own bodies as sites of “I can.” Weight-based shame can make people reluctant to engage in physical activity.This reluctance is partly explained by a desire to avoid the acute shame associated with, for example, a derisive comment about one’s body. This fear of how others might respond to one’s body could itself have a negative effect on health by directly reducing one’s movement. However, I argue that there is also a deeper problem: Weight-based shame, I suggest, affects how people constitute themselves not just as objects but as subjects. When we move less as a result of weight-based shame, we lose strength, endurance and agility. I argue this diminished capacity is directly given in experience. The body itself feels stiffer, more easily fatigued. The body’s correlates, spaces and terrains, feel inaccesible, even hostile. The body comes to feel like a burden instead of a site of agency. Thus weight-based shame not only reduces a person’s movement; it can also reduce both their perceived and their actual ability to move. Iris Marion Young said women in a sexist society are physically handicapped. I make a similar claim about fat/obese people in a fatphobic society. It seems cruelly ironic that fat/obese people are shamed for moving too little in a society that handicaps them in their efforts to move.
BIO: Dr Margaret Steele is a lecturer in philosophy at University College Cork. Her research interests include philosophy and phenomenology of health, particularly in relation to fatness, fitness and food. Her work in this area draws not only on scholarly resources but also on her direct experience of living as a fat person.
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

Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Saturday Apr 24, 2021
Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Pablo Andreu, University of Zaragoza (Spain).
ABSTRACT: George Canguilhem has affirmed that pathology, far from being a state of abnormality, should be considered as another way of life (Canguilhem, 1978, p. 45). According to Canguilhem, being healthy is not the same as being “normal”, what he considers to be an inapplicable concept to biology, but normative, this is, making of a way of life a norm. If accepted, such consideration not only affects what we take to be “pathological”, it also questions what the nature of medical practice is, and what this praxis should be to start. Specifically, if illness is not something that bursts into existence and interrupts it, but rather a new mode of existence properly speaking, then what role, if any, does a patient play in the understanding we have of their illness, and what importance should be attributed to this role during the medical treatment. To this aim, an approach to pathology and medical praxis from a phenomenological point of view seems promising. Martin Heidegger’s notion of care (Sorge) and Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity could explain the existential shift on a patient’s existence. But tracing illness as a continuity rather than an interruption could be problematic, questioning our very understanding of recovery. In other words, to what extent would a phenomenological approach to medical practice entail a methodological and epistemological differentiation between medically treating a patient and healing a person, and, more importantly, would this demarcation be constructive for the patient’s wellbeing to begin with? The task, hence, is double: on the one hand, to state the benefits phenomenology can bring to medicine; on the other, its plausibility. The following article aims to do so by following the personal account of a cancer fighter, evaluating it through the lens of Heidegger’s notion of care and Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity.
BIO: Pablo Andreu is a PhD Student at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. Mainly focused on phenomenology, and specifically the phenomenology of death, Pablo Andreu has also approached analytic philosophy through the Master’s program offered by the University of Barcelona.
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 Apr 17, 2021
Saturday Apr 17, 2021
This episode of Season 5 of the BSP Podcast features Caroline Greenwood Dower, University of Durham. The paper is co-authored with Benedict Smith, University of Durham. The presentation is taken from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online.
ABSTRACT: Anxiety is the most common mental disorder in primary care and higher education counselling settings. Observations from clinical psychotherapy suggest a shift in reporting towards “I have anxiety”, an object-related sensation, rather than “I feel anxious”, a subject-related sensation. In anxious states individuals are typically highly vigilant, attentive to and at times preoccupied with the external world. The physical symptoms of anxiety – breathlessness, increased heart rate – draw attention back to the inner experience of the body, but as with anxious thoughts, they are often reported as ‘intrusive’. In response to the increase in help-seeking students a programme of workshops entitled ‘Calm to the Core’ was developed within a higher education counselling setting, as an applied phenomenological therapeutic alternative to individual counselling sessions. Group facilitated workshops help participants to explore and share the lived experience of anxiety, through a series of movement and breath-based enquiries. Our interest is whether these workshops increase body awareness and specifically awareness of how the individual experiences and organises their contact with the world. A helpful way to understand the benefit of this approach is by utilizing Merleau-Ponty’s account of embodiment, particularly how an enhanced sense of embodied agency can help mitigate the effects of previously ‘intrusive’, passively-experienced, anxious symptoms. This paper addresses the practical application of phenomenology to common mental disorders for therapeutic benefit. Some modalities of psychotherapy have a rich tradition of employing phenomenological methods within a talking therapy. Here, movement is central to the approach, combined with an emphasis on the group verbal sharing of first-person lived experiences. Diagnoses of anxiety, particularly in young adults, are increasingly becoming part of how such people regard their identity. An increased understanding of anxiety is thus urgent. To this end this paper will present pilot research findings from the workshops and set-out areas for future research.
BIOS:
Caroline Dower is a psychotherapist and Head of the Counselling Service at Durham University. Caroline has a long-standing interest in the integration of body-based methods into talking therapies and is beginning a study of the experience and conceptualisation of student anxiety in the ecology of the university setting.
Dr Benedict Smith is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at Durham University. His research interests include phenomenology, philosophy of psychiatry, Wittgenstein and Hume. Dr Smith’s research has focused on narratives of depression and the value of lived-experience in an interpersonal setting. His current research uses related phenomenological insights to address experiences of anxiety.
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 Apr 10, 2021
Joe Smeeton - ‘In search of meanings within child protection social work in the UK’
Saturday Apr 10, 2021
Saturday Apr 10, 2021
Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features Joe Smeeton, University of Sheffield.
ABSTRACT: Social work theory often tears itself between sociological and psychological ways to understand the human condition and, as I will argue, is always therefore left missing important ways to think about what is happening for people. This paper will draw upon phenomenology to make the case that social work should focus first of all on the lived experience of the people who use its services and to prioritise the meanings they make of their experiences prior to applying external theoretical 'professional' meanings. Theorists such as Merleau-Ponty offer a theoretical framework that sees the human condition as embodied in the social world and therefore consisting of plural accounts of experience that don't easily lend themselves to oversimplified ontical descriptions of the social or psychological realms that claim to explain the commonalities of 'humanity'. Social work is therefore able to work within a more ethical mode of practice and Levinas adds a richness to current ethical frameworks to support a questioning about social work practice.
BIO: Joe Smeeton has practiced, taught and researched social work within the UK for the last 30 years. He has focused much of this work within child protection social work and with looked after children. He is particularly interested in the knowledge bases that inform social worker's decision-making and especially how the risk paradigm has impacted upon organisational and individual decisions. More recently Joe is exploring the use of phenomenology as a way of understanding and theorising about social work. Joe has taught at the Universities of Sheffield, Salford, East Anglia and Nottingham Trent. He has developed qualifying and post-qualifying programmes and has also acted as external examiner at a number of other programmes.
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 Apr 03, 2021
Maja Berseneva - ‘The transformative power of vulnerability’
Saturday Apr 03, 2021
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
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).
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 20, 2021
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.
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/
