Florentien M. Verhage Associate Professor of Philosophy

Florentien M. Verhage

verhagef@wlu.edu
On Leave

Professor Verhage joined the Department of Philosophy in 2008. She is also a core faculty member in the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program.

My research is strongly interdisciplinary. in much of my work I have been concerned with challenging and unsettling traditional phenomenological frameworks of intersubjective encounters by setting it in opposition to and letting it collaborate with contemporary work in feminist phenomenology, chicana theory, critical race theory, decolonial theory, and borderland theory (as inspired by the work of Gloria Anzaldúa). A major objective of this interdisciplinary work is to develop a “phenomenology in and of the margins,” which is a project that attends to a double crisis: the crisis of the subject who is marginalized and silenced, and the crisis of phenomenology trying to heed her call. 

My current work-in-progress addresses this crisis in close interdisciplinary dialogue with the work of Christina Sharp, NourbeSe Philip, and Tina Campt. Through these dialogues, I critically address phenomenology’s (in)ability to listen to the unheard voice of the colonized and racialized subject. I appeal to Gloria Wekker’s evocative image of “diving into the wreck” of colonialism and to Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s account of the painter who says: “perhaps I paint to break-out [surgir],” in order to develop a practice of phenomenological break-out. This is a practice that (i) learns from Sharpe’s methods of aspiration, annotation, and redaction, (ii) attends to refusal as an act of agency, (iii) unsettles other phenomenological practices, and (iv) break boundaries around disciplines. Thus, I wonder, what does it mean for phenomenology to dive into the wreck and participate in the important decolonial work of “listening to the hum” (Campt), “not-telling”  (Philip) , “unsaying” (Trinh T. Min-ha), and “unforgetting” (Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz)?

 

Education

  • Ph.D. Philosophy, McGill University (2009)
  • M.A. Philosophy of Cognitive Science, University of Sussex (2001)
  • B.A/M.A. Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience, University of Maastricht (1999)

Research

  • Phenomenology (esp. Merleau-Ponty), Gender Theory, Chicana Theory, Critical Race Theory, Decolonial Theory, 20th Century Continental Philosophy

Teaching

  • Introduction to Philosophy
  • Introduction to Continental Philosophy: Being in the World
  • Introduction to Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (for WGSS)
  • Personal Identity
  • Existentialism: Meaning and Existence
  • Postmodernism: Power, Difference, Disruption
  • The Unruly Body: Philosophy, Science, Culture (cross-referenced with WGSS)
  • The Second Sex: Beauvoir on the Power of Gender (crosslisted with WGSS)
  • The Self and the Social World (cross-referenced with WGSS)
  • Perception and Human Experience: Merleau-Ponty's Phenomenology
  • Seminar on Living Philosopher: Linda Alcoff – Knowledge and Identity (Capstone Course)
  • Honor's Thesis Writing Seminar

Selected Publications

  •  “'I Must be Surprised, Disoriented:' Merleau-Ponty on Language as Disruptive Movement.”  In Understanding Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism, edited by Ariane Mildenberg. Series: Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism, 86-99. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.

  • “Lived Experience.” In Understanding Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Understanding Modernism, edited by Ariane Mildenberg, 299-300. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.

  • “Philosophy Comes to Life: Elaborating an Idea of Feminist Philosophy.” In Feminist Philosophies of Life, edited by Chloe Taylor and Hasana Sharp, 146-162. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press: 2016.

  • “Living With(out) Borders: Oppression as Intimate Experience,” Emotion Space and Society 11 (2014): 96-105. Reprinted in Intimacy and Embodiment, a special issue of Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014): 111–120.

  • “The Vision of the Artist/Mother: The Strange Creativity of Painting and Pregnancy.” in Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering, edited by Sarah LaChance Adams and Caroline Lundquist, 300-319. New York: Fordham University Press, 2013.

  • “The Body as Measurant of All: Dis-covering the Other,” Symposium 12 (2008): 166-182.

Work in Progress

  • “Unsaying Silence in a Singing World: Decolonial Challenges for Phenomenology” (33062 words).  Themes: Forgotten Voices, Race/Gender, Erasure, Listening, Decolonizing Phenomenology, Developing new Practices of Listening and Seeing, Interdisciplinarity.

  • “The Ways Our Bodies Work: Vulnerability and Dis-Ease” (7248 words).  Themes: Disability, Habit Body, Affect, Prosthesis