Available now online, a new article for the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology by Andrew Barrette (Boston College).
Andrew Barrette – “Contributions to the Phenomenology of the Smile: Disruption During a Pandemic”
JBSP (Received 11 Jan 2021, Accepted 05 Mar 2023, Published online: 15 Mar 2023)
Abstract: This paper investigates the meaning of the smile and how various kinds of disruptions motivate its thematization. In so doing, it broaches experiences in the recent pandemic, as the masked face disrupts the givenness of the smile. Indeed, the paper claims that such a situation affords the possibility of becoming even more attentive to the conditions of meaningfulness at a global scale. It evidences such a claim by first tracing some essential points of the meaning of meaning via the analysis of intentionality in the work of Edmund Husserl and Bernard Lonergan; then, it reviews the classic treatment of the smile’s meaning by Frederick Buytendijk, along with Lonergan’s further clarification of how an pre-thematic or elemental relation between persons conditions the phenomena; it concludes by suggesting how various sorts of disruption might motivate the smile’s thematization, especially in phenomenology’s inquiry back to the elemental dimension of meaning.
Full article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00071773.2023.2189018
Andrew Barrette, Philosophy Department, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA, USA
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