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Which key concepts are crucial for conceptualizing the political in a phenomenological way? This semester, the third edition of the lecture series In Debate focuses on methodological groundwork by examining six key concepts that are taken from the phenomenological tradition and will be further developed in terms of political inquiries: field, quasi-transcendentality, corporal difference, style, situativity and plurality.

The inquiry starts by questioning seemingly unchangeable conditions causing oppression, discrimination, or other forms of injustice. In phenomenological reflection, they produce fields of meaning that need to be examined in light of their historical sedimentations and their future transformability. In the sense that fields are both contingent (historical) and constitutive, they can be called quasi-transcendental. What can also be analyzed is how they inscribe themselves into the corporal difference of lived bodies and are manifested in specific styles of behavior and perception. Political phenomenology therefore takes its point of departure from the concrete situatedness of subjects, who stand in the ambivalence of irreducible embeddedness and possible transgression. This set of tools, provided mainly by French Existentialist phenomenology, can be complemented by the Arendtian notion of plurality which she conceives as the political condition as such. Plural perspectives, opinions, as well as conflicts allow the world to come in view as a disputed place, but also as a space for common action.

This semester, the organizers will give the main lectures themselves and invite international scholars for commentaries and discussion. This way, we aim to reflect on the self-understanding of political phenomenology in dialogue with other approaches, and with a focus on methodological issues.

Hosted by Thomas Bedorf (Hagen), Thiemo Breyer (Cologne), Steffen Herrmann (Hagen), Sophie Loidolt (Darmstadt) and Gerhard Thohauser (Darmstadt)

• Flyer In Debate 3 (pdf 133 kB)
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