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Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Ida Djursaa, Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London.

Ida Djursaa 'Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Erotic'

Abstract: This paper seeks to advance a phenomenological notion of sexuality as a modality of bodily sensibility through the lens of Merleau-Ponty.    Feminist philosophers such as Judith Butler (1989) and Elizabeth Grosz (1994) have critiqued Merleau-Ponty's analysis of sexuality in the Phenomenology of Perception for presenting sexuality in a universalist (hence masculinist) way, abstracted from the reality of gender difference and non-heterosexual identities. Drawing on Alia Al-Saji's (2008) and Tom Sparrow's (2015) work on sensibility, however, this paper argues that Merleau-Ponty's notion of sexuality should be understood as a modality of sensibility that operates prior to, and as generative of, categorisations into sexual identities. I show how Merleau-Ponty's analysis of sexuality, rather than making a claim about the universalist character of desire such as it must be for everyone, in fact makes a more basic claim about the strictly bodily, that is, the sensible dimension of our most intimate intercorporeal relations.    Insofar as sensibility designates the pre-reflective and pre-perceptual binding of bodies, then, understanding sexuality as a modality of sensibility, this paper argues, allows us to investigate the ways in which bodies live desire prior to perception and reflection. In this respect, Merleau-Ponty's description of sexuality as the ‘blind linking of bodies' (Merleau-Ponty, M., Phenomenology of Perception, p159) is thus not reducible to sexual identity but is rather descriptive of the erotic as the life force that motivates attractions and repulsions – affective ‘pulls' – between bodies.   Finally, the paper asks how this erotic life force itself, and hence our bodies' (in)capacity for intimacy, is structured by our socio-politico-historical contexts, including the reality of gender norms? Can a critical phenomenology of sexuality help us to not only understand but also empower the erotic lives of bodies?

Bio: I am a PhD candidate at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy, Kingston University, London. My research project critically traces the phenomenological notion of transcendence such as it operates in Husserl, Levinas, and Merleau-Ponty. It argues that transcendence works, most basically, at the level of bodily sensibility rather than consciousness or perception. Ultimately, I employ this notion of sensibility to investigate how the particular ways in which our bodies move are structured by our individual history as well as the socio-cultural-historical contexts which invisibly prescribe normative ways of moving and acting based on gender, race, class.

Simon Rich reads his story “We’re Not So Different, You and I,” from the May 13, 2024, issue of the magazine. Rich has published eight books of fiction, including “The Last Girlfriend on Earth,” which was adapted for the TV series “Man Seeking Woman,” and “Hits and Misses,” which won the Thurber Prize for American Humor in 2019. A new story collection, “Glory Days,” will be published in July.

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Cynan Jones reads his story “Pulse,” from the May 6, 2024, issue of the magazine. Jones is the author of six books of fiction, including, most recently, the novel “Cove” and the story collection “Stillicide.” His previous story in The New Yorker, “The Edge of the Shoal,” was the 2017 winner of the BBC National Short Story Award.

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Joyce Carol Oates reads her story “Late Love,” from the April 22 & 29, 2024, issue of the magazine. Oates, a winner of the National Humanities Medal and the Jerusalem Prize, among others, is the author of more than seventy books of fiction. A new novel, “Butcher,” and a story collection, “Flint Kill Creek,” will be published later this year.

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Souvankham Thammavongsa reads her story “Bozo” from the April 8, 2024, issue of the magazine. Thammavongsa has published four volumes of poetry and the story collection “How to Pronounce Knife,” which won the Giller Prize in 2020.

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Mohammed Naseehu Ali reads his story “Allah Have Mercy” from the April 1, 2024, issue of the magazine. Ali is the author of “The Prophet of Zongo Street,” a story collection, which came out in 2005. He teaches undergraduate fiction in N.Y.U.’s Creative Writing department.

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Zach Williams reads his story “Neighbors” from the March 25, 2024, issue of the magazine. Williams is a Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University. His début story collection, “Beautiful Days,” will be published in June.

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As we regularly do on this program-- we steelman different philosophical positions. Hopefully the process brings people some joy. Today we go from ideology, to New Atheism vs Creationism, to Aristotle, to Thomas Nagel, to Phillip Goff's new book called Why? The Purpose of the Universe.

Thank you so much for listening! Could never do this without your help. 

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What cookware is best for your kitchen?

There is a bewildering array of pots and pans on offer: stainless steel saucepans, cast iron skillets, even 10-in-1 cookware systems that use layers of various materials. But do they deliver on their promises to help you reach culinary bliss? Listener Emily wants to know if the ones she's seen live up to the hype or are just marketing BS. What do all the materials do? What about cleaning them? And just what is the much-vaunted 'hot spot' that lights up at a certain temperature?!

There are also lingering concerns about non-stick coatings. Are they safe? And what about the alternatives if you're not sure?

Please do keep your suggestions coming of wonder products for me to investigate. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or wonder product promising to make you happier, healthier or greener and want to know if there’s any evidence behind it, then email us: [email protected] or you can send a voice note to our WhatsApp number: 07543 306807

Presenter: Greg Foot

Topics discussed in this episode include:

-"A Retrospect" and "A Few Don'ts By An Imagiste" by Ezra Pound

-A ruinous misunderstanding of meter and music

-"Intellectual-emotional complex" and unified sensibility

-"The Chinese Written Character as a Medium for Poetry" by Ernest Fenollosa

-The ideogrammatic method

-Kiru, Wabi-Sabi, and Mono no Aware (see this fascinating wiki-page on Japanese aesthetics)

-"In A Station of the Metro" by Ezra Pound

-"Fan-Piece For Her Imperial Lord" by Ezra Pound

-The Objective Correlative

-"Oread" by H.D.

-"The Pool" by H.D.

-"Des Imagistes" anthology

-Vorticism vs. "Amy-gism"

-"The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams

-"This Is Just To Say" by William Carlos Williams

-"Arrival" by William Carlos Williams

-Expressionist painter Egon Schiele

-"The Widow's Lament in Springtime" by William Carlos Williams

-Objectivism, Projectivism, Deep Imagism

-"The Diver" by Peter Vertacnik, and his book, "The Nature of Things Fragile"

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My favorite poetry podcasts for:
Sharp thoughts and cutting truths (Matthew): Sleerickets
Lovely introspection and sensitive reflection (Alice): Poetry Says
The landscape of Ohioan poetry (Jeremy): Poetry Spotlight

Supported in part by The Ohio Poetry Association
Art by David Anthony Klug

List of the most common metrical feet:
Iamb: weak-STRONG (u /)
Trochee: STRONG-weak (/ u)
Anapest: weak-weak-STRONG (u u /)
Amphibrach: weak-STRONG-weak (u / u)
Dactyl: STRONG-weak-weak (/ u u)
Cretic: STRONG-weak-STRONG (/ u /)
Pyrrhic: weak-weak (u u)
Spondee: STRONG-STRONG (/ /)