Titel: “Über die Medialität der Erfahrung im Kontext der Phänomenologie“ (Arbeitstitel)

The project deals with the question whether subjectivity can be exhaustively grasped on the basis of a binary logic of »activity« and »passivity«, respectively of »doing« and »suffering«. I intend to inquire the limits of the idea that dimensions of experiencing and feeling, which always have socio-cultural implications and are socio-historically framed, must always resemble an »active doing« or a »passive suffering«. By discussing subjectivity, necessary conditions for the development of meaning and meaningfulness come into the center of my research, which I will formulate in their direct entanglement with socio-historical, socio-cultural and socio-material structures.

The working hypothesis assumes that the conceptual and thematic reduction to categories of a rigid activity or passivity of subjectivity is unsuitable to think along the impact that sociality has on meaning-making processes. Consequently, I ask how the processuality of subjectivity can be thought beyond activity and passivity. I posit that the processuality of subjectivity resembles an involved, operative mediality. It is involved, because a subject that is capable of experience always moves in a meaning-laden, non-neutral world and finds itself in situations with which it has to deal. Executing, because subjectivity, as being shaped by consciousness and perception, does not create the contexts of the surrounding world ex nihilo, but is essentially a medial condition for meaning-laden, social contexts.

The dissertation is written from a phenomenological perspective and addresses especially Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy.

Shortbiography

Vanessa Ossino completed her bachelor's degree in philosophy and european ethnology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. For her master's degree, she studied philosophy at the Freie Universität Berlin with a focus on phenomenology and affect theory. In her master's project, she explored the bodily-affective foundations of expressive phenomena, drawing in particular on the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, and Edmund Husserl. Currently she is a doctoral candidate at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne where she is working on her dissertation as part of a cotutelle-de-thèse in association with the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Thiemo Breyer (University of Cologne) and Prof. Dr. Emmanuel Alloa (University of Fribourg/Switzerland), her dissertation is dedicated to the mediality of experience in the context of phenomenology. As a research assistant at the Institute Mensch, Ethik und Wissenschaft (Berlin), she is involved in the ethical research of the Pflegepraxiszentrum Berlin (PPZ), where innovative care technologies are tested in geriatric acute care clinics. The project is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Email: vossinosmail.uni-koeln.de

Vorträge:

„Arbeit im Medialen, Arbeiten an den Phänomenen“, Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, September 2022 (invited)

„Die Medialität der Erfahrung als kreativer Bruch“, Hochschule für Philosophie München, 29. July 2022

„Existential Feelings as a „Style“ of Experience and Anticipatory Structure“, Summer Module Course “affective intentionality in medieval philosophy & phenomenology”, Universität Würzburg, 26. – 30. July 2021

“Subjectivity and Beyond. About the Mediality of Experience in the Context of Phenomenology”, Husserl-Archive Köln, December 2021

Publikation:

“Soziale Medien. Ein (kosmo-politischer) Erscheinungsraum?“ In: hannaharendt.net (forthcoming)