Gage Krause - 'Desynchronization, Alienation, and the Social World in Grief'

Season 6 continues with another presentation from our 2022 annual conference, Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Spatiality. This episode features a presentation from Gage Krause, Fordham University.

Gage Krause 'Desynchronization, Alienation, and the Social World in Grief'

Abstract: Recent phenomenological approaches to grief have, understandably, focused primarily on the relationship between the griever and the deceased, describing grief as an experience of different kinds of losses and as a transformation of various structures of subjectivity. In addition to the griever-deceased relationship, phenomenologists have even more recently begun to attend to the cultural and social aspects of grief (e.g. Køster and Kofod 2021). However, phenomenologists have yet to provide a thorough examination of the social dynamics and the sense of social isolation and alienation that can appear in grief. In order to address these issues, this paper will clarify the interplay of temporality and sociality in grief. Building on Thomas Fuchs' account of ‘contemporality', I argue that grief involves a desynchronization between the griever and their social world, which diminishes the griever's sense of belonging with and ability to relate to non-grieving others. Further, I argue that a griever's implicit or explicit awareness of their desynchronization from the social world accounts for the sense of alienation and estrangement often experienced when engaging in daily routines, projects, and social interactions. That is, the transformations in temporality in grief also involves an awareness that the griever temporally inhabits the world differently than others, causing the griever to experience once-familiar activities and social engagements as alien and strange. To make this argument, this paper will draw on literary-autobiographical accounts, namely Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Notes on Grief, Denise Riley's Time Lived, Without Its Flow, and C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed, with a focus on their descriptions of social interaction, performing daily routines, and self-understanding. Attending to these intertwined temporal and social aspects will provide a clearer understanding of how grievers renegotiate their relationship to their social world in the wake of their loss.

Bio: Gage Krause is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy at Fordham University. His research focuses primarily on Phenomenology and Social & Political philosophy, working at the intersection of Critical Phenomenology, Phenomenological Psychopathology, and Philosophy of Disability.

This recording was taken from our recent conference. The British Society for Phenomenology 2022 Annual UK Conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology II: Explorations of Embodiment, Emotions, and Sociality' (30 August – 1 September), convened by the University of Exeter, in person and online. This event was co-sponsored by the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health, Egenis, the Shame and Medicine research project, the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project, and the British Society for Phenomenology; and included two special panel series from the Shame and Medicine research project and the Imagining Technologies for Disability Futures (itDf) research project.

The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP?