Freitag 16.05.2025 18:00 Uhr

Zoom Zugang: https://uni-koeln.zoom.us/my/breyer 

One is Not Born, But Rather Becomes Normal: Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Lifeworld

Husserl’s phenomenology of the lifeworld affirms the importance of engaging critically with the historical past to revitalize and transform its meaning. But his account of the role that ‘normality’ plays in world-constitution raises questions about the usefulness of Husserl’s generative phenomenology for a social critique of normalizing power. Through a reading of key passages in the Intersubjectivity manuscripts, I identify three tendencies in Husserl’s late phenomenology: expansionist, relational, and generative. I argue that the first tendency is frankly Eurocentric and normalizing, the second supports an inclusive multicultural reading of his work, and the third suggests a stronger emphasis on the intergenerational temporality of the lifeworld, rooted in the transcendental problem of birth and death. Ultimately, I think a critical phenomenology of the lifeworld calls for a more explicit analysis of the power relations implicit in all three tendencies, albeit in different ways.

 

Lisa Guenther is one of the most influential figures in contemporary philosophy. In her work, she combines insights from phenomenology, social and political philosophy, critical race theory, feminism, and critical prison studies. She is well known for her book Solitary Confinement: Social Death and Its Afterlives (2013) in which she levels criticism at the US-American prison system from a perspective that is focused the lived experience of isolation.

To find out more about her publications and research activity, you can follow this link.