Us and Them: Phenomenological Perspectives in Dialogue

In classical phenomenology we find reflections on collective intentionality, community, Mitsein, fellow-feeling, interaction, and empathy, which have in turn motivated recent dialogue between phenomenology and the social and cognitive sciences. What has often remained in the background, however, is the question of how to conceive of the relationship between 'Us' and 'Them'. This draws attention to issues of exclusion, marginalisation, national identity, social identities, (non-)belonging, and conflict. In this conference we thus want to explore the various ways in which 'Us' and 'Them' are related, interdependent, and stand in opposition to one another. Our aim is to not only reflect on and better understand the Us/Them dichotomy, but also to put pressure on its assumed dichotomous nature. 

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Day 1: Thursday 5th October (CET)

09:15 – 09:30 - Opening remarks

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09:30 – 10:45 - (Keynote) Andrea Pitts - Susto, Collective Trauma, and Disability Justice in the Writings of Gloria Anzaldúa

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10:45 – 11:00 - Break

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11:00 – 12:15 - Panel 1

Lucia Angelino - Questioning the boundary between ‘Us’ and Them with Waldenfels and Derrida 

Georg Harfensteller - The Proven and the Unmanageable in Action. Intersubjective Familiarity and Strangeness with Alfred Schütz and Bernhard Waldenfels

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12:15 – 13:15 - Lunch

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13:15 – 14:30 - Panel 2

Christine Hamel & Ann J. Cahill - A Critical Phenomenology of Voice: Intervocality and Possibilities for Vocal Justice

Daniel Vespermann - Collective affective gaslighting – Hijacking affective dispositions in group-level and institutional contexts

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14:30 – 14:45 - Break

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14:45 – 16:00 - Panel 3

Kelee Lee - Going beyond the boundaries of one's own world: A Husserlian account of listening

Boris Pantev - I-Thou and Us-Them: Various Axes of Analogy in Husserl

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16:00 – 16:15 - Break

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16:15 – 17:15 - (Keynote) Daniel Gyollai -Whatever happened to Hungarian freedom fighters? Dissociative collective identity and the phenomenology of forgetting

Day 2: Friday 6th October (CET)

09:15 – 10:30 - (Keynote) Christina Friedlaender - Knowing Worlds, Building Futures: On (Un)shared Imaginations, Genocide, and Silicon Valley

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10:30 – 10:45 - Break

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10:45 – 12:00 - Panel 4

Minna-Kerttu M. Kekki - Our truth versus theirs: Collective memory as a context-dependent collective experience

Vikas Kumar Choudhary - The Idea of ‘Us’ And ‘Them’ in Politics of Memory: Phenomenology of Oppressed Memory

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12:00 – 13:00 - Lunch

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13:00 – 14:15 - Panel 5

Maria Robaszkiewicz - Speaking to Each Other as Disruption. Speech and Speechlessness under the Condition of Lack of a Common Language

Laurine Blonk - Community in a world of biographical strangers

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14:15 – 14:30 - Break

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14:30 – 15:45 - Panel 6

Emma Brännlund & Emiliano Trizio - Bound to be “them” at home. “Us and them” under military occupation: a phenomenological account of the case of Kashmir

Andréa Delestrade - Universal Bodies? Universalism and the Making of (Racial) Boundaries in Husserl’s Liebesgemeinschaft

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15:45 – 16:00 - Break

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16:00 – 17:00 - (Keynote) Alba Montes Sánchez - Towards a Phenomenology of Belonging in Migration Processes