Political phenomenology has become a lively field of discussion. The recently published "Handbook of Political Phenomenology" (Routledge 2024) bears witness to this. In this lecture we want to present our understanding of political phenomenology, which has guided the compilation of the handbook: (1) Political phenomenology exists in different variants today, even if not always under this name. We believe, however, that these approaches can justifiably be covered and systematized under the label ‘political phenomenology.’ (2) Political phenomenology makes an important systematic contribution to political theory. Our thesis is that it functions as a valuable corrective to dominant trends in current political philosophy and therefore serves a crucial function within contemporary political thought. (3) Political phenomenology catalyzes crucial debates within the phenomenological tradition. The history of political phenomenology goes back as far as the history of phenomenology itself and continues to shape key shifts and devolopments within that tradition.
Political Phenomenology in Debate: Eco-Phenomenology
WHAT & WHO !?
Next Event: 28.10. 18h15 CET
Enter the Online-LectureSusanna Lindberg (University of Leiden)
Being in the World of Global Warming
Response: Alexander Friedrich
Sophie Loidolt (TU Darmstadt), Steffen Herrmann (University of Hagen), Gerhard Thonhauser (TU Darmstadt)
Introducing Political Phenomenology
Sophie Loidolt (TU Darmstadt)Sophie Loidolt is professor of Philosophy and holder of the chair of Practical Philosophy at TU Darmstadt. [University Website]
Steffen Herrmann (University of Hagen)Steffen Herrmann is Associate Professor at the Institute for Philosophy at the FernUniversität in Hagen. [University Website]
Gerhard Thonhauser (TU Darmstadt)Gerhard Thonhauser is Research Associates of Practical Philosophy (Prof. Sophie Loidolt) at TU Darmstadt.
[University Website]
Susanna Lindberg (University of Leiden)
Being in the World of Global Warming
The phenomenon of global warming cannot really be perceived, or it can only be perceived because it is firstly and foremostly explained by science. But it is not only a scientific fact: it is also an event that impacts and even transfigures our everyday being-in-the-world. It seems to me that global warming is not only an event in the world, but also an event that forces us to fundamentally revise the phenomenological concept of being-in-the-world. It undoes the traditional phenomenological way of considering the world as a familiar homeworld and situates existence directly in unhomely planetary “unworld.” To properly conceive of the change of being-in-the-world by global warming, we should comprehend the way in which our lifeworld has grown into planetary dimensions.
I will first briefly remind how “world” was thought in terms of “homeworld” by Husserl and Heidegger. Then I will show how Derrida pushes this conception to its limits in a thinking of “worldlessness,” and finally, how Claude Romano thinks world in terms of the “event” that disarticulates the world altogether. But I think that none of these world concepts is sufficient to explain the kind of un/world experience opened by global warming.
I propose to analyze the world of global warming in terms of a paradoxical inauthentic event that reveals world as planetary techno-nature. I will also show that in order to think the world as a planetary dimension, it is necessary conceptualize locality as displace, historicity as deep history, and transcendence as bio-technicity. Finally, I will show how, in order to conceive of ethics and politics at the height of the event of global warming, phenomenology must come to terms with this the paradoxical inauthentic event happening to the inauthentic crowd.
Susanna Lindberg (University of Leiden)Susanna Lindberg is a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Leiden, Netherlands. She is also academic director of the Institute for Philosophy of the University of Leiden. [University Website]
Tao DuFour (University of Cambridge)
On the Environmentality of Postcolonial Landscapes
This lecture examines the lived experience of Caribbean landscapes, with a view to understanding its generative constitution. It considers theoretical questions around embodiment and spatiality that concern ways in which experiences of environmental horizons take on a shared quality, coloured by relations with others across generations. An examination of this quality, which can be described as the generativity of landscape experience, is what the lecture frames as its environmentality. Questions of the generative transfer of spatio-environmental sense implicate complex interpretative problems, when colonial and postcolonial legacies of migration that involved mass and forcible displacements of populations are taken into consideration. Such conditions define the historical situation through which Caribbean landscapes emerged; with reference to this Caribbean situation, we will consider the environmentality of postcolonial landscapes.
Tao DuFour (University of Cambridge)Tao DuFour is Assistant Professor in History and Theory of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. [University Website]
Michael Marder (University of the Basque Country)
Toward a Static-Genetic Conception of Nature
In this talk, I re-interpret the Husserlian distinction between static and genetic kinds of phenomenology (and Derrida’s subsequent deconstruction of this distinction) in light of what I call a static-genetic conception of nature. The task of fleshing out such a conception entails taking a close look both at the speculative, formally self-contradictory character of stasis and at how, contrary to Aristotle, genesis embraces birth and fabrication (in particular, the fabrication of birth). Much of the talk will be dedicated to unraveling the sense of this notion on the hither side of the usual efforts at overcoming the nature-culture split.
Michael Marder (University of the Basque Country)Michael Marder is Ikerbasque Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Vitoria-Gasteiz [University Website]
Bryan E Bannon (Merimack College)
Eco-Phenomenology and Relational Values
The concept of relational value has recently emerged as an alternative paradigm for the valuation of nature. The idea is that relational values, by focusing on the ways that human beings value a relationship with nature, both transcends the debate in environmental circles over whether instrumental or intrinsic value is a better course for environmental conservation and opens a pathway to a more nuanced account of how human beings value nature. The idea has been supported by ecophenomenologists such as Barbara Muraca, Thomas Greaves, and Christophe Gilliand. But the dominant approach has been to focus on how humans and cognitively sophisticated animals value their environment, which has led to two criticisms: first, that the relational value approach remains a more egalitarian form of anthropocentrism and, second, that the account of relational values fails to describe accurately how human beings value the environment and is therefore unhelpful in decision-making. I will answer these challenges in two ways: 1) making the case that the phenomenological account of relational value in nature requires us to think about meaning and value as occurring in the more-than-human (and perhaps more-than-living) world and 2) sketching how this phenomenological theory of relational value can aid environmental decision-making.
Bryan E Bannon (Merimack College)Bryan Bannon is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Merimack College, Massachusetts, USA. [University Website]
Mădălina Diaconu (University of Vienna)
Landmarks for an Engaged Eco-Phenomenology of Atmosphere
Throughout its history, phenomenology delimited its approach from natural sciences. More recently, the New Phenomenology of atmosphere (Schmitz, G. Böhme) stressed the differences between the atmosphere, roughly defined as emotional space or ambiance, and the physical atmosphere as it is explained by the environmental sciences, thus perpetuating “the trauma of the birth” of phenomenology in reaction to naturalism (Wood). In addition to this, recent (eco)phenomenological approaches maintain the focus on the “Earth” (e.g. Brown and Toadvine). Even the New Phenomenology of atmosphere discusses weather events only incidentally.
My lecture explores the possibility of a phenomenology of (physical) atmospheres in the Anthropocene in a way that resonates in several respects with the claim of “engaged phenomenology” to regard reflection as a form of participation and as an invitation to world-making through interdisciplinary research collaborations. After reconnecting the ecological dimension of the physical atmosphere to dwelling, I propose several amendments to the New Phenomenology of atmosphere: to integrate the multilayered concept of engagement (Berleant); consider the impact of knowledge on the perception and emotional appreciation of weather; contextualize the subject by enlarging the repertoire of descriptive resources and including traditional knowledge and non-Western cultures; finally, incorporate critical moral-political claims that foster practices of individual and collective care (Saito).
Mădălina Diaconu (University of Vienna)Mădălina Diaconu is a private lecturer at the University of Vienna and a member of the editorial boards of "Contemporary Aesthetics" (Castine, USA), "polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren" (Vienna) and "Studia Phaenomenologica" (Bucharest). [University Website]
