Phenomenology and Critique

Puncta: Journal of Critical Phenomenology, 2024

In the fall of 2022, the philosophy department at Loyola University Chicago hosted a conference around the theme "Phenomenology and Critique" in association with Marquette University. On November 4, 2022, there was an atmosphere of bustle as people started to fi ll the room. It was one of the fi rst large in-person events organized by the philosophy department at Loyola since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. We welcomed the return to hosting conferences with both anticipation and caution, having made sure that the conference would be held in a hybrid format. We were especially delighted to welcome our two keynote speakers, both renowned phenomenologists spearheading the critical turn in phenomenology, affi liated with two Canadian universities: Professors Alia Al-Saji of McGill University, and Lisa Guenther of Queen's University. The motivation for this conference was not only to collaborate with a neighboring Jesuit university-where phenomenology is also a strong interest of both faculty and students-but more importantly, to bring scholars from around the world together to talk about phenomenology and its critical potential, scholars who are representative of classical phenomenology and those who are now leaders of the critical phenomenological movement. The topic of the conference and this special issue, "phenomenology and critique," was intended to respond to a need for methodological clarifi cation within phenomenology, particularly with respect to critical phenomenology. The "critical turn" that phenomenology is presently undergoing is an attempt for phenomenology to describe and analyze social and political phenomena, especially phenomena that pertain to oppressive structures of the social world such as sexism, white supremacy, and colonialism. This critical turn has been especially driven by debates concerning critical phenomenology. Critical phenomenology is commonly understood to be both a philosophical project that attempts to make visible and analyze certain oppressive structures that are latent in the everyday world of experience and a political practice-a struggle of emancipation from these oppressive structures. Its proponents claim this sort of endeavor necessitates a step beyond the scope and methodology of classical phenomenology, especially Husserlian phenomenology. Although some fi gures of classical phenomenology might off er methods

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2023

50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology, ed. Gail Weiss, Gayle Salamon, and Ann Murphy, 2019

Critical phenomenology goes beyond classical phenomenology by reflecting on the quasi-transcendental social structures that make our experience of the world possible and meaningful, and also by engaging in a material practice of “restructuring the world” in order to generate new and liberatory possibilities for meaningful experience and existence. In this sense, critical phenomenology is both a way of doing philosophy and a way of approaching political activism. The ultimate goal of critical phenomenology is not just to interpret the world, but also to change it.

Ithaque, 2022

Phenomenology and Critique. Loyola-Marquette University Phenomenology Conference Phenomenology offers specific methods that disclose transcendental structures of experience which, in our everyday experience, are overlooked and presupposed. As such, it is understood to be a critical enterprise. Yet in recent years, there has been a ‘critical turn’ in phenomenology: phenomenology is also increasingly understood as a form of social critique capable of engaging, analyzing, and illuminating contemporary socio-political phenomena. Proponents of this critical turn emphasize that, in addition to clarifying the character of constituting consciousness, subjectivity, the lifeworld, and intersubjectivity, phenomenology can also thematize ethical and political experience, as well as shed light on the diverse experiences of marginalized subjects. This new understanding of phenomenology stems from the diagnosis that traditional phenomenologists have overlooked aspects of lived experience and embodiment, such as the subject’s gendered and racialized inscription in the world. The aim of this conference is to explore the possibilities and opportunities for phenomenology today, following this critical turn. The questions and topics we would like to explore include, for example, the following: -Is phenomenology a critical enterprise? What makes it critical and what is ‘critique’? -Can phenomenology play a role in contributing to social and political change? -What is critical phenomenology? Is it a continuation of classical phenomenology, or is it something that has surpassed it and is now distinct from classical phenomenology? -Can phenomenology critique cultural, ethical, and political norms? If so, how? -Can phenomenology analyze sexual, racial, and gender oppression? If so, how?

Studia UBB. Philosophia, 2021

Phenomenological critique attempts to retrieve the lived experience of a human community alienated from its truthful condition and immersed in historical crises brought by processes of objectification and estrangement. This introductory article challenges two methodological assumptions that are largely shared in North American Critical Phenomenology: the definition of phenomenology as a first person approach of experience and the rejection of transcendental eidetics. While reflecting on the importance of otherness and community for phenomenology’s critical orientation, we reconsider the importance of eidetics from the standpoint of Husserl’s genetic phenomenology, highlighting its historical and contingent character. Contrary to the received view of Husserl’s classical phenomenology as an idealistic and rigid undertaking, we show that his genetic phenomenology is interested in the material formation of meaning (Sinnbildung), offering resources for a phenomenological approach to a materialist social theory.

Chiasmi: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, 2021

Introduction to the special issue "Critical Phenomenology After Merleau-Ponty' in Chiasmi: Trilingual Studies Concerning the Thought of Merleau-Ponty, co-edited with Ted Toadvine (Penn State University).

Puncta, 2021

What is the meaning of critique for critical phenomenology? Building on Gayle Salamon’s engagement with this question in the inaugural issue of Puncta: A Journal for Critical Phenomenology (2018), I will propose a six-fold account of critique as: 1) the art of asking questions, moved by crisis; 2) a transcendental inquiry into the conditions of possibility for meaningful experience; 3) a quasi-transcendental, historically-grounded study of particular lifeworlds; 4) a (situated and interested) analysis of power; 5) the problematization of basic concepts and methods; and 6) a praxis of freedom that seeks not only to interpret the meaning of lived experience, but also to change the conditions under which horizons of possibility for meaning, action, and relationship are wrongfully limited or foreclosed. While the first two dimensions of critique are alive and well in classical phenomenology, the others help to articulate what is distinctive about critical phenomenology.

Phenomenology as Critique – Why Method Matters_TOC, 2022

Drawing on classical Husserlian resources as well as existentialist and hermeneutical approaches, this book argues that critique is largely a question of method. It demonstrates that phenomenological discussions of acute social and political problems draw from a rich tradition of radically critical investigations in epistemology, social ontology, political theory, and ethics. The contributions show that contemporary phenomenological investigations of various forms of oppression and domination develop new critical-analytical tools that complement those of competing theoretical approaches, such as analytics of power, critical theory, and liberal philosophy of justice. More specifically, the chapters pay close attention to the following methodological themes: the conditions for the possibility of phenomenology as critique; critique as radical reflection and free thinking; eidetic analysis and reflection of transcendental facticity and contingency of the self, of others, of the world; phenomenology and immanent critique; the self-reflective dimensions of phenomenology; and phenomenological analysis and selftransformation and world transformation. All in all, the book explicates the multiple critical resources phenomenology has to offer, precisely in virtue of its distinctive methods and methodological commitments, and thus shows its power in tackling timely issues of social injustice.

Phenomenology and Critique Conference (Loyola-Marquette), 2022

This paper attempts to measure the distance between Phenomenology and Critique. This is not to ask whether Phenomenology and Critique can inform each other – I assume they can and have – but whether a properly Phenomenological project can be Critical. I will consider four major areas of tension between Phenomenology and Critique. My position will be that while some of these tensions are real, it also makes a significant difference how we understand Phenomenology (not to mention Critique). Following many Critical Phenomenologists, I draw on Merleau-Ponty to suggest an articulation of Phenomenology that accentuates some of the affinities between Critique and Phenomenology. I will focus on four areas of tension: the eidetic character of Phenomenology as opposed to the concrete character of Critique; the transcendental character of Phenomenology as opposed to the “quasi-transcendental” character of Critical Phenomenology, in Guenther’s words; the descriptive nature of Phenomenology as opposed to the normative nature of Critique; and the possibly “naïve” character of Phenomenology with respect to the shaping of phenomena by social forces. In each case, I will not try to show that there is no space between Phenomenology and Critique; rather, I suggest that the tension between the two need not be so decisive as it might at first appear.