Kym Maclaren
I'm a phenomenologist, specializing in Merleau-Ponty's thought, but also very influenced by Beauvoir, Sartre, and Heidegger (and Hegel, too, if you'll allow me to count him as a phenomenologist). Increasingly, Deleuze and Guattari play a role in my thinking, too. My work revolves around issues of intersubjectivity, embodiment, human development and its social conditions, emotion and transformation, and group dynamics that exceed and inform any group member's plan or action. I also like to learn from, and take up critically, scientific literature in these areas.
Since 2012, I have been teaching courses in prison and to people on parole, based on the Walls to Bridges program. Collaborating with previously incarcerated students who, in various ways, are seeking to transform our social world for the better, I have initiated the Transformative Justice Project (TJP) at 果酱视频. The TJP aspires, through working with community organizations, to help create spaces for reflection on the social conditions leading to and resulting from incarceration, and to support and develop community programs that facilitate more transformative and community-based forms of justice.
Selected Publications & Presentations
Edited Collections
- Morris, David and Kym Maclaren, eds. Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty鈥檚 New Ontology of Self. Ohio University Press, 2015.
- Maclaren, Kym, ed. Special Issue: Intimacy and Embodiment: Phenomenological Perspectives. Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)
Selected Articles, Chapters, and Commentaries
- (co-authored with the Re-imagining Re-Entry Public Philosophy Group) 鈥淏eing-at-Home and Being-Unhomed in Prison鈥� in The Philosopher, April 2024.
- 鈥淢erleau-Ponty, the Improvisatory Body, and Humans as Revolutionary Animals鈥� in Transformation and the History of Philosophy, edited by Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits. Routledge, (2024): 265-283.
- 鈥淚ntimacy as Transgression and the Problem of Freedom.鈥� Puncta: Journal for Critical Phenomenology 1 (2018):18-40.
- 鈥淢erleau-Ponty on Human Development and the Retrospective Realization of Potential.鈥� Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(4) (2017), 609-621.
- 鈥淭he 鈥�别苍迟谤别-诲别耻虫鈥� of Emotions: Emotional Institutions and their Dialectic.鈥� In Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phemenology, edited by John Russon and Kirsten Jacobson. University of Toronto Press, (2017): 51-80.
- 鈥淭he Magic Happens Inside Out: A Reflection on the Transformative Power of Self-Expression and Dialogical Inquiry in Inside-Out Prison Exchange Courses,鈥� in 鈥淓ngaged Philosophical Inquiry,鈥� ed. Barbara Weber and Jennifer A. Vadenboncoeur, special issue, Mind, Culture, Activity 22, no.4 (2015): 371-385.
- 鈥淭ouching Matters: Embodiments of Intimacy.鈥� Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)
- 鈥淓motional Clich茅s and Authentic Passions: A Phenomenological Revision of a Cognitive Theory of Emotion.鈥� Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 10, No. 1 (2011): 45-65.
- 鈥淓motional Metamorphoses: The Role of Others in Becoming-Oneself鈥�, in Embodiment and Agency: New Essays in Feminist Philosophy, edited by Susan Sherwin, Letitia Meynell, and Sue Campbell. Pennsylvania State University Press, (2009): 1-45.
- 鈥淓mbodied Perceptions of Others as a Condition of Selfhood? Empirical and Phenomenological Considerations.鈥� Journal of Consciousness Studies Vol. 15, No. 8 (2008): 63-93.
- 鈥淭he Role of Emotion in an Existential Education: Insights from Hegel and Plato.鈥� International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.48 (2008).