April-May 2021/Avril-Mai 2021
Online via Zoom: the zoom link will be posted just prior to the events
EPTC/TCEP 2021 Schedule of Events
| Friday, April 30th | PAPER |
| 11:00am–1:00pm EST | Higher Education and the Deworlding of the World Dave Koukal (University of Detroit, Mercy) |
| Saturday, May 1st | PANEL |
| 11:00am–1:00pm EST | Back to The Things Themselves! (BTTT!) Moderator: Dave Koukal Toward a Phenomenology of Phobia Benjamin Graham (Metanoia Institute, University of Middlesex) and Matthew Graham (Independent Scholar) Deer Icon; or how a run became a dog, a deer, a stanchion and a fetish Adam van Sertima (Champlain College of Vermont) |
| Sunday, May 2nd | WORKSHOP |
| 11:00am–1:30pm EST | BTTT! Workshop Facilitator: Dave Koukal |
| Thursday, May 6th | PAPER |
| 7:00 – 9:00pm EST | Film Activities Among the Poor: Subjectivity at the Edges of Finance Stephen Crocker (Memorial University) |
| Thursday, May 13th | PAPER |
| 7:00 – 9:00pm EST | Enzo Paci’s Rethinking of Husserl’s Late Philosophy: The Unity of the Lifeworld with the Transcendental and the Ontology of Intersubjectivity Tyler Gasteiger (York University) |
| Thursday, May 20th | PAPER |
| 7:00 – 9:00pm EST | Voices that Matter: The Contour of Bodies and Materialities Camila Mugan, (Brock University) |
| Saturday, May 22nd | PANEL |
| 2:30-4:30pm EST | Art and/as Phenomenology Organizer: David Collins (McGill University) The Practice of Phenomenology: Turning Perception Inside-Out with Merleau-Ponty and Cezanne Adam Blair (SUNY Stony Brook) Commentary: Erica Harris Merleau-Ponty in the Shadows Erica Harris (McGill University) Commentary: Adam Blair The Strange Grape: Power and Expression On-Screen and on the Horizon Zelda Blair (University of Western Ontario) Commentary: David Collins |
Paper Abstracts
Stephen Crocker, “Film Activities Among the Poor: Subjectivity at the edges of finance”
Drawing on Maurizio Lazzarato’s ideas, I show how the expansion of financial debt has required new forms of ‘subjectivation’ to track, monitor and administer not only money but, more importantly, the lives and subjectivities of debtors. I focus on the role media now play in articulating the interior lives of the poor with complex forms of finance, by examining experimental ‘Film activities among the poor’ first developed in the late 1960’s Canadian war on poverty, and then exported for use in new forms of micro-credit developing in rural India in the early 1980’s.
Tyler Gasteiger, “Enzo Paci’s Rethinking of Husserl’s Late Philosophy: The Unity of the Lifeworld with the Transcendental and the Ontology of Intersubjectivity”
The paper will consider Enzo Paci’s rethinking of some of the tensions left in Husserl’s late thinking in the Crisis. First, it will examine how Paci interprets the tension between the reduction to the lifeworld and the transcendental reduction, which he tries to resolve by understanding the two reductions as a unity in which the transcendental reduction becomes historically self-reflexive. Second, it will look at how Paci understands the tension between Husserl’s phenomenology of the naturally and historically embodied subject and the inherited modern ontology of nature as a tension that demands a fundamental ontological rethinking.
Dave Koukal, “Higher Education and the Deworlding of the World”
There are two trends in higher education that diminish the worlds of our students. The first is the fragmentation of the world that has come with the specialization of human knowledge. The second is the emphasis on vocationalization that presents the world as being almost entirely concerned with economic necessities. These two trends converge in our universities to distort and by extension impoverish our students’ larger sense of the world—keeping them ignorant in one sense even while educating them in another. This essay offers a critique of these trends by first drawing on the phenomenological conception of “world” and connecting this notion to higher education conceived as a “world-disclosing” activity. The paper will then give an account of how the trends of vocationalization and specialization manifest themselves in contemporary university culture, and how they work together to “de-world” the lives of our students and deprive them of possibilities that are part of what it means to be human. After showing how this impoverishment undermines the world-disclosing function of higher education, the paper will then suggest one way to counter this “de-worlding of the world”: the teaching of the finitude of the human condition by reminding our students that all humans are born into this finitude—more generally known as ignorance—and that our knowledge or sense of the world is always only partial. It is this realization that has the potential of placing our students once again before the vastness of the world in wonder and curiosity. In this realization they will gain a better sense of the world as a distant horizon still to be explored in all of its inexhaustible complexity and meaning. At the same time, coming to grips with their own ignorance will imbue them with an intellectual humility that will shield them not only from their own ignorance, but the ignorance of others as well.
Camila Mugan, “Voices that Matter: The Contour of Bodies and Materialities”
How does voice matter? In the semiotic tradition, the voice is what gives a body its singularity. Yet, bodies are defined by their distinctiveness from other bodies in interrelations and communicative processes. This paradoxical instantiation deems voice the necessary condition for relationality upon which Western metaphysics bases its reflections on signification, semantics and the life of consciousness. By attempting to address the questions raised by Karen Barad (2008) on the passivity and immutability of matter, which “at best inherits a potential for change derivatively from language and culture” (121), this paper evaluates the role voice plays in materializing bodies before the rational coherence of thought and perception.
Many Thanks / Merci beaucoup
The executive committee would like to express its gratitude to the following scholars who were instrumental in helping to assemble this program.
Le comité exécutif voudrait exprimer sa gratitude aux spécialistes dont les noms suivent pour l’aide qu’ils ont apportée à la mise au point de ce programme.
Megan Altman, Ian Angus, Michael Barber, Bettina Bergo, Robert Booth, Erik Bormanis, Antonio Calcagno, John Caruana, Brian Dunst, Helen Fielding, Lisa Guenther, J. Keeping, Matthew King, Jennifer Komorowski, Christian Lotz, Leslie MacAvoy, Kym Maclaren, Peter Olen, Ishaan Selby, Murray Smith, Judy Spark, Francesco Tava, Mickey Vallee, Jordan Van Den Hoonard, Jacob Vangeest, Sarah Vitale, John Walsh, Mark Zion.
EPTC Membership List / TCEP liste officielle des membres
If you would like to be included in EPTC/TCEP’s official membership list, please be sure to email your name, affiliation, e-mail address, and areas of interest to EPTC/TCEP at eptc.tcepATgmail.com.
Si vous désirez figurer sur la liste officielle des membres de TCEP/EPTC, veuillez envoyer un courriel avec votre nom, affiliation professionnelle, adresse courriel, et domaines d’intérêt au TCEP/EPTC à eptc.tcepATgmail.com.
