International Conference Phenomenology as Performative Exercise

“All my life has been learning to see and exercising”. It is such terms that Edmund Husserl described the phenomenological praxis. Phenomenology, therefore, is not a theoretical doctrine, but an exercise. It means learning to see and to experience and hence involves a shift of perspective, i.e. a transformation of our way of experiencing things. This exercise has a critical character, since it focuses our attention on those conceptions which objectify ourselves, others and the world. From this perspective, the conference aims to connect the phenomenological approach to the paradigm of performativity. For the first time J. L. Austin with the concept of “performative”, pointed to a dimension of language which does not describe a state of affairs, but rather performs an action, thus making things with words. Jacques Derrida radicalized Austin’s conception from a phenomenological perspective, by arguing that every praxis involves a performative dimension, since it constitutes itself in repetition, bringing out effects into the world that re-act retrospectively upon praxis as such. Moreover, Michel Foucault's discourse analysis and Judith Butler's gender studies describe subject-constitution as a performative process. In this way, they also open up to the possibility of resistance and transformation. The concept of performativity involves a bright polivocity as well as an increasing centrality. The aim of the conference is to systematically connect phenomenology and performativity. This connection aims on the one hand to understand phenomenology in a new way, that is: as a performative exercise. On the other hand, it intends to offer a critical perspective on the “performative turn” as well.

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