Atelier de philosophie moderne et contemporaine avec Gail Weiss

La Faculté recevra la conférencière Gail Weiss dans le cadre des Ateliers de philosophie moderne et contemporaine.

Organisation: Donald Landes, Jérôme Gosselin-Tapp et Catherine Rioux

Veuillez noter que la présentation sera en anglais, suivie d’une période de questions bilingue.

Résumé : Alors que la plupart des personnes qui réfléchissent au vieillissement ont tendance à se concentrer sur la détérioration des capacités du corps, on accorde beaucoup moins d'attention à l'évolution des relations sociales qui accompagnent inévitablement la vieillesse, au fur et à mesure que les partenaires et les pairs meurent. Pour remédier à la fragilité sociale de la vieillesse, nous devons fournir les soutiens sociaux nécessaires aux personnes âgées pour qu'elles développent de nouveaux liens significatifs, d'autant plus dans les cas où leur mobilité est sévèrement limitée, afin que le dénouement du « nœud de relations » qui est une composante inévitable de la vieillesse n'entraîne pas une rupture complète des liens avec les proches et la communauté humaine.

Abstract: While many people, when contemplating the prospect of becoming old, tend to focus on the deteriorating capacities of the aging body, much less attention has been paid to the changing social relationships that inevitably accompany old age as partners and peers die. I argue that to address the social fragility of old age, we must provide the social supports necessary for elderly people to develop new meaningful bonds, all the more so in cases where their mobility is severely limited, so that the unraveling of the “knot of relations” that is an inevitable component of old age does not result in a complete severing of one’s ties to loved ones and to the human community.

Author Bio: Gail Weiss is Professor of Philosophy at George Washington University. She recently served as Executive Co-Director of the Society for Phenomenology and Existentialism (SPEP) and as General Secretary for the International Merleau-Ponty Circle. Her previous monographs include Refiguring the Ordinary (Indiana U. Press: 2008) and Body Images: Embodiment as Intercorporeality (Routledge 1999) and she is currently completing a monograph entitled Existential Ambiguities: Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty. In 2020 she coedited 50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology (Northwestern University Press) with Ann V. Murphy and Gayle Salamon and she has edited several other volumes on Merleau-Ponty and embodiment including Intertwinings: Interdisciplinary Encounters with Merleau-Ponty (SUNY Press: 2008), Feminist Interpretations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty with Dorothea Olkowski (Penn State Press: 2006), and Thinking the Limits of the Body with Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (SUNY Press: 2003). Other publications include journal articles and book chapters that draw upon phenomenology, feminist theory, critical race theory, disability studies, literature, and queer theory to address the ways in which sexist, racist, ageist and ableist understandings of “normal bodies” differentially affect the meaning of our lived, intercorporeal experience.

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