Critical Phenomenology

June 13 + 16, 6-8pm ET

Devin Fitzpatrick

Looking within, we may observe and reflect on how experience is formed: how notes may become a melody, how tools may seem extensions of our bodies, how moods may color everything. While classical phenomenology of the 20th century is descriptive, meant to revolutionize our understandings of science and metaphysics, critical phenomenologists working today like Lisa Guenther and Gayle Salamon focus on the intersection of the personal and political, on how solitary confinement may "unmake" the world of a prisoner or how the click of heels in a school hallway is heard as a threat to be responded to with transmisogynist violence. We will discuss what critical phenomenology is, where it comes from, how it is done, and how we might apply it to our own experiences. (Readings for Session 1: Gayle Salamon, "What's Critical about Critical Phenomenology?" (2018) and selections from "Movement" in The Life and Death of Latisha King: A Critical Phenomenology of Transphobia (2018); Lisa Guenther, "Unmaking and Remaking the World in Solitary Confinement" (2018). Readings for Session 2: Bonnie Mann, "The Difference of Feminist Philosophy: The Case of Shame" (2018).)

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Devin Fitzpatrick is a PhD Candidate in Philosophy at the University of Oregon specializing in ethics, phenomenology, and pragmatism. He is an editor and co-founder of Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology. His dissertation is titled “Ethics for the Depressed: A Value Ethics of Engagement.”

Photo by Rahul Pandit from Pexels