Talia Welsh, Ph.D., is the Chair of the Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta. She was formerly the UTAA Distinguished Service Professor and Department Head of Philosophy & Religion/Director of Integrated Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She researches Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work in child psychology and philosophy and has published extensively in health studies, feminist theory, particularly on parenting, pregnancy, and how bodies are normalized. Her books include the translation of Merleau-Ponty’s lectures in child psychology and pedagogy in the volume Child Psychology & Pedagogy: Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne (Northwestern University Press, 2010) and the monograph on Merleau-Ponty entitled The Child as Natural Phenomenologist: Primal and Primary Experience in Merleau-Ponty’s Psychology (Northwestern University Press, 2013). Her two most recent books are the monograph, Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health. (New York: Routledge: 2022) and the co-edited with Susan Bredlau volume, Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty (New York: SUNY Press, 2022). Address: Women’s and Gender Studies 3-13 Assiniboia Hall University of Alberta Edmonton, AB T6E 2S7 Canada
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health, 2022
This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to pr... more This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to praise or blame individuals for their health is politically and economically motivated and has reinforced growing health disparities between the wealthy and poor under the guise of individual responsibility. We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to, in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health's charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one's health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access. This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health Welsh , 2022
This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to p... more This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to praise or blame individuals for their health is politically and economically motivated and has reinforced growing health disparities between the wealthy and poor under the guise of individual responsibility.
We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health’s charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one’s health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health, but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access.
This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
The Maternal Tug: Ambivalence, Identity, and Agency, 2020
This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter pare... more This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter parenting and the popular advice on how to better parent. Myths of a bygone past when parenting was easier, natural, and less involved draw an obscure veil over inevitable and avoidable ambivalence in parenting. One finds that the solution to helicopter parenting is a rigorous disciplinary project on the part of the parents—what I call “meta-helicopter parenting.” Falling largely to mothers, one is encouraged to think one’s child is a project entirely dependent upon proper choices. Such ideas foster the neoliberal turn which makes addressing structural problems collectively elusive.
In this chapter, “Broken Pregnancies: Assisted Reproductive Technology and Temporality,” Talia We... more In this chapter, “Broken Pregnancies: Assisted Reproductive Technology and Temporality,” Talia Welsh explores how the progressive nature of the medical sciences in contemporary developed worlds has made pregnancy not just an experience, but as a possible experience for all women. Assisted technologies of pregnancy provide a very different horizon regarding pregnancy and make infertile bodies not appear as broken, but rather as temporary problems that can be solved with the right medical intervention. In such a way, assisted pregnancies mirror our contemporary experience of the medical field as an infinite horizon upon which any ailment one day will be cured. The cures for brokenness entrench brokenness within us making every part of our experience something that can now be interpreted as needing medical assistance.
Abstract
In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the ... more Abstract In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the piano teacher’s sitting room furniture has relationships, intentions, and desires. The developmental psychologist Paul Bloom attributes this imagination of objects as living as part of normal development in childhood. He argues that such a tendency, while scientifically incorrect, was an evolutionary advantage in the brutal long prehistory of mankind. Whatever the merits of Bloom’s evolutionary story, it fails to grasp the nature of creative imagination in children. Maurice Merleau-Ponty cautions against reading backward from the adult into the child. Seeing all that is adult existing in some minor form in children fails to capture those unique, and often lost, parts of childhood experience. In their imaginative play, children rarely confuse object and toy play with religion. Instead of fitting into adult metaphysical commitments, children’s imaginations challenge our organization of reality. The intensity and rigidity of children’s play with objects, including their fear of select ones, often seems to speak of objects, such as those from “The Stray Horse,” that are connected to a parallel world that intervenes weakly on our own. It is fantastical, but not as in an addition to our metaphysical commitments, but as a kind of barbarian reality. This paper takes up the challenge of childhood imagination as the phenomenological prehistory of our own creative imagination. It considers the work in psychoanalytic and phenomenological accounts of childhood memories and ties it to the creative imagination of authors like Hernández.
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) is well known for his work in phenomenology, but his lectures ... more "Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) is well known for his work in phenomenology, but his lectures in child psychology and pedagogy have received little attention, probably because Talia Welsh translated the lectures in their entirety only in 2010. The Child as Natural Phenomenologist summarizes Merleau-Ponty’s work in child psychology, shows its relationship to his philosophical work, and argues for its continued relevance in contemporary theory and practice.
Welsh demonstrates Merleau-Ponty’s unique conception of the child’s development as inherently organized, meaningful, and engaged with the world, contrary to views that see the child as largely internally preoccupied and driven by instinctual demands. Welsh finds that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about human psychology remain relevant in today’s growing field of child studies and that they provide important insights for philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists to better understand the human condition."
Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empiric... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empirical research in the sciences, and the only one to examine child psychology with rigor and in such depth. His writings have recently become increasingly influential, as the findings of psychology and cognitive science inform and are informed by phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952 are a broad investigation into child psychology, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. They argue that the subject of child psychology is critical for any philosophical attempt to understand individual and intersubjective existence. Talia Welsh’s new translation provides Merleau-Ponty’s complete lectures on the seminal engagement of phenomenology and psychology.
Intertwinings presents exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on twentieth-century French philoso... more Intertwinings presents exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on twentieth-century French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The contributors break new ground by bringing Merleau-Ponty's work into conversation with literary theory, architecture, cultural studies, critical race studies, and current feminist theory and practice. Spanning Merleau-Ponty's early and late thought, this volume focuses on the ontological, ethical, and political implications of his unique emphasis on the constitutive intertwinings of inside and outside, self and other, language and gesture, body and world, and identity and difference. Intertwinings affirms Merleau-Ponty's insight that we should not eradicate, but rather celebrate, the corporeal differences that make our encounters with both human and nonhuman others a source of inexplicable richness and endless fascination.
"This is a philosophically interesting and valuable collection. I like its broad range of topics, its interdisciplinary character, and the fact that it made me think about Merleau-Ponty in unexpected and instructive ways." -- William S. Hamrick, coeditor of Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought
Contributors include Justine Dymond, Sally Fischer, Elizabeth Grosz, Annemie Halsema, Maurice Hamington, Lawrence Hass, Greg Johnson, Patricia Locke, Rachel McCann, Janice McLane, Kelly Oliver, Rashmika Pandya, Gail Weiss, Talia Welsh, and Bruce Young.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices brings together eminent international philosophers t... more Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices brings together eminent international philosophers to discuss the inter-dependence of critical communities and aesthetic practices. Their contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue, both as a model for critique and as a generator of community.
Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one’s relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.
The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.
Drawing on Merleau-Ponty offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, abili... more Drawing on Merleau-Ponty offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work draws our attention to how the body is always our way of having a world and never merely a thing in the world. Our conception of the body must take account of our cultures, our historically located sciences, and our interpersonal relations and cannot reduce the body to a biological given. Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty takes up Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body to explore the ideas of normality, abnormality, and pathology. Focusing on the lived experiences of various styles of embodiment, the book challenges our usual conceptions of normality and abnormality and shows how seemingly objective scientific research, such as the study of pathological symptoms, is inadequate to the phenomena it purports to comprehend. The book offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences. "This volume is a significant contribution to the field of Merleau-Ponty studies, clarifying and critically engaging with crucial ideas at play throughout a wide array of scholarship on Merleau-Ponty. It will also serve to bring Merleau-Ponty's work to greater attention in the fields of medical humanities and disability studies, in ways that will shine new light on both the limitations and possibilities of Merleau-Ponty's thought for helping us to make sense of the great variation in human embodiment and psychology." — Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University
This paper considers phenomenological descriptions of health in Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty... more This paper considers phenomenological descriptions of health in Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Svenaeus. In these phenomenologies of health, health is understood as a tacit, background state that permits not only normal functioning but also philosophical reflection. Nietzsche’s model of health as a state of intensity that is intimately connected to illness and suffering is then offered as a rejoinder. Nietzsche’s model includes a more complex view of suffering and pain as integrally tied to health, and its language opens up the possibility of many “healths,” providing important theoretical support to phenomenological accounts of the diversity and complexity of health and illness.
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health, 2022
This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to pr... more This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to praise or blame individuals for their health is politically and economically motivated and has reinforced growing health disparities between the wealthy and poor under the guise of individual responsibility. We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to, in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health's charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one's health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access. This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health Welsh , 2022
This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to p... more This book explores the personal value of healthy behavior, arguing that our modern tendency to praise or blame individuals for their health is politically and economically motivated and has reinforced growing health disparities between the wealthy and poor under the guise of individual responsibility.
We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health’s charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one’s health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health, but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access.
This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
The Maternal Tug: Ambivalence, Identity, and Agency, 2020
This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter pare... more This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter parenting and the popular advice on how to better parent. Myths of a bygone past when parenting was easier, natural, and less involved draw an obscure veil over inevitable and avoidable ambivalence in parenting. One finds that the solution to helicopter parenting is a rigorous disciplinary project on the part of the parents—what I call “meta-helicopter parenting.” Falling largely to mothers, one is encouraged to think one’s child is a project entirely dependent upon proper choices. Such ideas foster the neoliberal turn which makes addressing structural problems collectively elusive.
In this chapter, “Broken Pregnancies: Assisted Reproductive Technology and Temporality,” Talia We... more In this chapter, “Broken Pregnancies: Assisted Reproductive Technology and Temporality,” Talia Welsh explores how the progressive nature of the medical sciences in contemporary developed worlds has made pregnancy not just an experience, but as a possible experience for all women. Assisted technologies of pregnancy provide a very different horizon regarding pregnancy and make infertile bodies not appear as broken, but rather as temporary problems that can be solved with the right medical intervention. In such a way, assisted pregnancies mirror our contemporary experience of the medical field as an infinite horizon upon which any ailment one day will be cured. The cures for brokenness entrench brokenness within us making every part of our experience something that can now be interpreted as needing medical assistance.
Abstract
In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the ... more Abstract In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the piano teacher’s sitting room furniture has relationships, intentions, and desires. The developmental psychologist Paul Bloom attributes this imagination of objects as living as part of normal development in childhood. He argues that such a tendency, while scientifically incorrect, was an evolutionary advantage in the brutal long prehistory of mankind. Whatever the merits of Bloom’s evolutionary story, it fails to grasp the nature of creative imagination in children. Maurice Merleau-Ponty cautions against reading backward from the adult into the child. Seeing all that is adult existing in some minor form in children fails to capture those unique, and often lost, parts of childhood experience. In their imaginative play, children rarely confuse object and toy play with religion. Instead of fitting into adult metaphysical commitments, children’s imaginations challenge our organization of reality. The intensity and rigidity of children’s play with objects, including their fear of select ones, often seems to speak of objects, such as those from “The Stray Horse,” that are connected to a parallel world that intervenes weakly on our own. It is fantastical, but not as in an addition to our metaphysical commitments, but as a kind of barbarian reality. This paper takes up the challenge of childhood imagination as the phenomenological prehistory of our own creative imagination. It considers the work in psychoanalytic and phenomenological accounts of childhood memories and ties it to the creative imagination of authors like Hernández.
"Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) is well known for his work in phenomenology, but his lectures ... more "Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961) is well known for his work in phenomenology, but his lectures in child psychology and pedagogy have received little attention, probably because Talia Welsh translated the lectures in their entirety only in 2010. The Child as Natural Phenomenologist summarizes Merleau-Ponty’s work in child psychology, shows its relationship to his philosophical work, and argues for its continued relevance in contemporary theory and practice.
Welsh demonstrates Merleau-Ponty’s unique conception of the child’s development as inherently organized, meaningful, and engaged with the world, contrary to views that see the child as largely internally preoccupied and driven by instinctual demands. Welsh finds that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about human psychology remain relevant in today’s growing field of child studies and that they provide important insights for philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists to better understand the human condition."
Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empiric... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empirical research in the sciences, and the only one to examine child psychology with rigor and in such depth. His writings have recently become increasingly influential, as the findings of psychology and cognitive science inform and are informed by phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty’s Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952 are a broad investigation into child psychology, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. They argue that the subject of child psychology is critical for any philosophical attempt to understand individual and intersubjective existence. Talia Welsh’s new translation provides Merleau-Ponty’s complete lectures on the seminal engagement of phenomenology and psychology.
Intertwinings presents exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on twentieth-century French philoso... more Intertwinings presents exciting interdisciplinary scholarship on twentieth-century French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The contributors break new ground by bringing Merleau-Ponty's work into conversation with literary theory, architecture, cultural studies, critical race studies, and current feminist theory and practice. Spanning Merleau-Ponty's early and late thought, this volume focuses on the ontological, ethical, and political implications of his unique emphasis on the constitutive intertwinings of inside and outside, self and other, language and gesture, body and world, and identity and difference. Intertwinings affirms Merleau-Ponty's insight that we should not eradicate, but rather celebrate, the corporeal differences that make our encounters with both human and nonhuman others a source of inexplicable richness and endless fascination.
"This is a philosophically interesting and valuable collection. I like its broad range of topics, its interdisciplinary character, and the fact that it made me think about Merleau-Ponty in unexpected and instructive ways." -- William S. Hamrick, coeditor of Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought
Contributors include Justine Dymond, Sally Fischer, Elizabeth Grosz, Annemie Halsema, Maurice Hamington, Lawrence Hass, Greg Johnson, Patricia Locke, Rachel McCann, Janice McLane, Kelly Oliver, Rashmika Pandya, Gail Weiss, Talia Welsh, and Bruce Young.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices brings together eminent international philosophers t... more Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices brings together eminent international philosophers to discuss the inter-dependence of critical communities and aesthetic practices. Their contributions share a hermeneutical commitment to dialogue, both as a model for critique and as a generator of community.
Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one’s relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.
The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.
Drawing on Merleau-Ponty offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, abili... more Drawing on Merleau-Ponty offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s work draws our attention to how the body is always our way of having a world and never merely a thing in the world. Our conception of the body must take account of our cultures, our historically located sciences, and our interpersonal relations and cannot reduce the body to a biological given. Normality, Abnormality, and Pathology in Merleau-Ponty takes up Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body to explore the ideas of normality, abnormality, and pathology. Focusing on the lived experiences of various styles of embodiment, the book challenges our usual conceptions of normality and abnormality and shows how seemingly objective scientific research, such as the study of pathological symptoms, is inadequate to the phenomena it purports to comprehend. The book offers new insights into our understandings of health and illness, ability and disability, and the scientific and cultural practices that both enable and limit our capacity for diverse experiences. "This volume is a significant contribution to the field of Merleau-Ponty studies, clarifying and critically engaging with crucial ideas at play throughout a wide array of scholarship on Merleau-Ponty. It will also serve to bring Merleau-Ponty's work to greater attention in the fields of medical humanities and disability studies, in ways that will shine new light on both the limitations and possibilities of Merleau-Ponty's thought for helping us to make sense of the great variation in human embodiment and psychology." — Laura McMahon, Eastern Michigan University
This paper considers phenomenological descriptions of health in Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty... more This paper considers phenomenological descriptions of health in Gadamer, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Svenaeus. In these phenomenologies of health, health is understood as a tacit, background state that permits not only normal functioning but also philosophical reflection. Nietzsche’s model of health as a state of intensity that is intimately connected to illness and suffering is then offered as a rejoinder. Nietzsche’s model includes a more complex view of suffering and pain as integrally tied to health, and its language opens up the possibility of many “healths,” providing important theoretical support to phenomenological accounts of the diversity and complexity of health and illness.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empiric... more Maurice Merleau-Ponty is one of the few major phenomenologists to engage extensively with empirical research in the sciences, and the only one to examine child psychology with rigor and in such depth. His writings have recently become increasingly influential, as the findings of psychology and cognitive science inform and are informed by phenomenological inquiry. Merleau-Ponty's Sorbonne lectures of 1949 to 1952 are a broad investigation into child psychology, psychoanalysis, pedagogy, phenomenology, sociology, and anthropology. They argue that the subject of child psychology is critical for any philosophical attempt to understand individual and intersubjective existence. Talia Welsh's new translation provides Merleau-Ponty's complete lectures on the seminal engagement of phenomenology and psychology.
ABSTRACT This article takes up Richard Shusterman's somaesthetics as a way in which philosoph... more ABSTRACT This article takes up Richard Shusterman's somaesthetics as a way in which philosophy can be prescriptive about everyday embodiment. Popular self-help literature also promotes directed self-mastery, but it is often beholden to unquestioned norms and dualist ideas about the mind dominating the body. Somaesthetics encourages bodily self-mastery without dualism or social obedience. This article argues that in directed bodily self-transformation, such as somaesthetic discipline, one discovers one's vulnerability and dependency as much as one's strength. In conclusion, this article notes that human weakness and dependency circumscribe the reach of Shusterman's original idea of somaesthetics as always promoting individual flourishing. Instead, careful attention to embodiment leads to a realization of weakness. Somaesthetic practices are ways not simply to better lives but also to destabilize them.
This paper outlines the earliest writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: his proposals in the early 19... more This paper outlines the earliest writings of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: his proposals in the early 1930s which study a synthesis of science and philosophy as well as his first text, The Structure of Behavior (completed in 1938, published in 1942). The first section of the paper traces the historical development of his thought from a simple championing of the sciences (in contrast to the dominant neo-Kantian philosophy of the time) to a strongly critical stance toward any kind of reductionism in psychology. The second section describes how Merleau-Pomty’s critique of psychology’s overestimation of the ability to localize the causes of behavior leads him to limit the reach of scientific psychology. In conclusion, it outlines how his early idea of structure in psychology is offered as a solution to poles of naïve materialism in the sciences and abstract intellectualism in philosophy.
SYNOPSISMerleau-Ponty's first text, The Structure of Behavior, contains a conception of the r... more SYNOPSISMerleau-Ponty's first text, The Structure of Behavior, contains a conception of the relationship between science, psychology and philosophy that is not repeated or overcome in later texts. This article takes up Merleau-Ponty's unique picture of the integral role of science that is absent in his later phenomenological works.
Until the 1970s, models of early infancy tended to depict the young child as internally preoccupi... more Until the 1970s, models of early infancy tended to depict the young child as internally preoccupied and incapable of processing visual-tactile data from the external world. Meltzoff and Moore's groundbreaking studies of neonatal imitation disprove this characterization of early life: ...
A work that takes up development as its key theme must also inherently be a work about time. Typi... more A work that takes up development as its key theme must also inherently be a work about time. Typically, developmental psychology assumes an objective, linear progression of time that moves from the past and into the future in a rather orderly fashion. We move steadily along this line in a forward motion. However, as Talia Welsh demonstrates in The Child as Natural Phenomenologist, such an assumption will over-determine our understanding of childhood development. It too will be viewed as mostly linear (although with possible regressions, delays or alacrity), having a predictable, " normal " course in which an earlier stage is overcome by a more sophisticated one. An objective and linear course of development is one of many prejudices that adults tend to impose on their interpretations of children's behavior. This presumption is one of several that Talia Welsh takes up. In contrast, she argues: " no single path of development exists " (15) and favors a more open approach that more effectively brings us back to the children themselves. On the surface, this book's agenda is modest—to approach " the child's experience through Maurice Merleau-Ponty's interdisciplinary work on child psychology " (xi). However, it will be of interest to scholars who didn't realize they would be concerned with either Merleau-Ponty or childhood. Overall, it demonstrates how phenomenology can help us think more expansively and creatively about human experience. One of Welsh's pervasive concerns is finding the proper methodology to study childhood. Many presumptions have been made about the experiences of children in psychology and other disciplines. In the 1970's these inquiries became more rigorous. The lens of cognitive science was trained on babies and children. Since then there has been a proliferation of creative and compelling experiments attempting to penetrate the child's mind. Welsh affirms the value of empirical research for philosophers, and social scientists unfamiliar with phenomenology will find the book both accessible and relevant. She highlights how this compelling research can be interpreted in ways that avoid some rather unsatisfying dualisms (as I will elaborate). Thus, it can demonstrate that objective research methods can converse with lived experience, and it can enliven and enrich the interpretive approaches of philosophers and non-philosophers alike. Most people seem to be in agreement that childhood is a unique time of life that also greatly impacts who we are as adults. How are we to respect both the distinctiveness of childhood and the persistence of its import into adulthood? Welsh, through reference to Merleau-Ponty's works on child psychology and pedagogy (recently translated into English by Welsh herself), demonstrates that in our concern with the trajectory from child to adult we have underestimated just how unique childhood experience is. It is not that childhood is irrelevant to whom we become later, but the extent and manner of its impact will vary. Welsh writes: " infantile consciousness and infantile modes of structuration remain a type of original template upon which all subsequent experiences are laid. In the healthy individual, infantile structures of organizing the world lose their importance over time, but in the traumatized individual, infantile
In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Talia Welsh about feminism, existentialism, a... more In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Talia Welsh about feminism, existentialism, and the nature of work. They discuss feminist theory and ask if feminism adds a chapter to philosophy or should revolutionize the field? They talk about what to do with problematic artists and can one separate the art from the artist? They dialogue about defining womanhood, understanding masculinity and femininity, reforming masculinity, and reimagining the nuclear family in the 21st century. They also discuss an active life, a person's contributions to society, and redemption and forgiveness
The topic of work is something that Talia has been researching more recently. They define work and its variants from a phenomenological perspective. They discuss differences between cognition and thinking, work as meaning, and how people attempt to find value and meaning in science. They also discuss religion, criticisms about organized religion, and many other topics.
Talia Welsh has a PhD in philosophy and is currently a UC Foundation professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She spends most of her research with Merleau-Ponty and has translated his lectures given at Sorbonne in the volume, Child Psychology & Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952. You can find her work here.
In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Talia Welsh about the phenomenology of Merlea... more In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Talia Welsh about the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty. Talia provides her background in philosophy and with Merleau-Ponty specifically. She also discusses her work in gender and feminine studies. They discuss the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty and how one understands the experience of their own being. They provide an overview of phenomenology and Merleau-Ponty's contribution to this branch of philosophy. They also talk about how his philosophy can be applied and the juxtaposition that it has with psychology. They also talk about feminism and gender studies generally along with other topics.
Talia Welsh has a PhD in philosophy and is currently a UC Foundation professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She spends most of her research with Merleau-Ponty and has translated his lectures given at Sorbonne in the volume, Child Psychology & Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952. You can find her work here.
In this episode, we talked with Dr. Talia Welsh, a professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender and ... more In this episode, we talked with Dr. Talia Welsh, a professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. Dr. Welsh writes on mothering, maternal ambivalence, and child development. In this interview, “Meta-Helicopter Parenting” describes anti-helicopter parenting critics. Their parenting style is distinguished for its “nostalgia” for a childhood that is free and a form of parenting that is effortless. But in actuality, these Meta Helicoptering parents are “strictly regulating behavior” to provide artificial situations in which children can learn the skill of independence because the parent has assessed the situation sufficiently to ensure that the child’s experience provides them with a teachable moment.
In our discussion, there are questions about different kinds of ambivalence that mothers can experience: existential ambivalence – the personal experience of mixed feelings – and situational ambivalence – social constructs that pressure one to act in particular ways that may be contrary to one’s needs or desires. So, for example, situational ambivalence can affect a new mother’s decision to breastfeed. Both types of ambivalence can leave a person feeling as if there is no “right choice.”
We also discuss the idea of emerging adult ambivalence: the conflicting feelings that young adults have which may result in anxiety and depression due to social issues in the world and the everyday worries of a young college student. We also spoke about ART(Artificial Reproductive Technology), which undertones capitalism/ neoliberalism.
And, of course, we end with a time when Dr. Welsh ruined dinner.
It has become commonplace to attack helicopter parenting as producing an endless array of social ... more It has become commonplace to attack helicopter parenting as producing an endless array of social and individual woes. Young children, coddled and scheduled all day, fail to learn to play on their own and do not develop the basic cognitive skills to master self-control and deal with difficulties. When they age, as college age students, they are too anxious, depressed, and afraid of basic life decisions because of their overinvolved parents. These helicopter parents are even to blame, in an article in The Atlantic, for individuals taking offense too easily and taking emotion, instead of reason, as sufficient grounds for lawsuits against teachers and professors (Lukianoff & Haidt). This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter parenting and the popular advice on how to better parent. Myths of a bygone past when parenting was easier, natural, and less involved draw an obscure veil over inevitable and avoidable ambivalence in parenting. One finds that the solution to helicopter parenting is a rigorous disciplinary project on the part of the parents—what I call “meta-helicopter parenting.” Falling largely to mothers, one is encouraged to think one’s child is a project entirely dependent upon proper choices. Such ideas foster the neoliberal turn which makes addressing structural problems collectively elusive.
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Books by Talia Welsh
We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health’s charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one’s health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health, but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access.
This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003168676/feminist-existentialism-biopolitics-critical-phenomenology-time-bad-health-talia-welsh
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the piano teacher’s sitting room furniture has relationships, intentions, and desires. The developmental psychologist Paul Bloom attributes this imagination of objects as living as part of normal development in childhood. He argues that such a tendency, while scientifically incorrect, was an evolutionary advantage in the brutal long prehistory of mankind. Whatever the merits of Bloom’s evolutionary story, it fails to grasp the nature of creative imagination in children. Maurice Merleau-Ponty cautions against reading backward from the adult into the child. Seeing all that is adult existing in some minor form in children fails to capture those unique, and often lost, parts of childhood experience. In their imaginative play, children rarely confuse object and toy play with religion. Instead of fitting into adult metaphysical commitments, children’s imaginations challenge our organization of reality. The intensity and rigidity of children’s play with objects, including their fear of select ones, often seems to speak of objects, such as those from “The Stray Horse,” that are connected to a parallel world that intervenes weakly on our own. It is fantastical, but not as in an addition to our metaphysical commitments, but as a kind of barbarian reality. This paper takes up the challenge of childhood imagination as the phenomenological prehistory of our own creative imagination. It considers the work in psychoanalytic and phenomenological accounts of childhood memories and ties it to the creative imagination of authors like Hernández.
Welsh demonstrates Merleau-Ponty’s unique conception of the child’s development as inherently organized, meaningful, and engaged with the world, contrary to views that see the child as largely internally preoccupied and driven by instinctual demands. Welsh finds that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about human psychology remain relevant in today’s growing field of child studies and that they provide important insights for philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists to better understand the human condition."
Below is a pdf of the preface.
"This is a philosophically interesting and valuable collection. I like its broad range of topics, its interdisciplinary character, and the fact that it made me think about Merleau-Ponty in unexpected and instructive ways." -- William S. Hamrick, coeditor of Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought
Contributors include Justine Dymond, Sally Fischer, Elizabeth Grosz, Annemie Halsema, Maurice Hamington, Lawrence Hass, Greg Johnson, Patricia Locke, Rachel McCann, Janice McLane, Kelly Oliver, Rashmika Pandya, Gail Weiss, Talia Welsh, and Bruce Young.
Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one’s relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.
The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.
Papers by Talia Welsh
We are awash in concerns about the state of our health and recommendations about how to improve it from medical professionals, public health experts, and the diet-exercise-wellness industry. The idea that health is about wellness and not just preventing illness becomes increasingly widespread as we find out how various modifiable behaviors, such as smoking or our diets, impact our health. In a critical examination of health, we find that alongside the move toward wellness as a state that the individual is responsible to in part produce, there is a roll-back of public programs. This book explores how this "good health imperative" is not as apolitical as one might assume. The more the individual is the locus of health, the less structural and historical issues that create health disparities are considered. Feminist Existentialism, Biopolitics, and Critical Phenomenology in a Time of Bad Health’s charts the impact of the increasing shift to a model of individual responsibility for one’s health. It will benefit readers who are interested to think critically about normalization to produce "healthy bodies." In addition, this book will benefit readers who understand the value of personal health, but are wary of the ways in which health can be used as a tool to discriminate and fuel inequalities in health care access.
This volume is primarily of interest to academics, students, public health and medical professionals, and readers who are interested in critically examining health from philosophical perspective in order to understand how we can celebrate the value of healthy behavior without reinforcing discrimination.
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003168676/feminist-existentialism-biopolitics-critical-phenomenology-time-bad-health-talia-welsh
The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
In Felisberto Hernández’s story “The Stray Horse,” the young narrator imagines that the piano teacher’s sitting room furniture has relationships, intentions, and desires. The developmental psychologist Paul Bloom attributes this imagination of objects as living as part of normal development in childhood. He argues that such a tendency, while scientifically incorrect, was an evolutionary advantage in the brutal long prehistory of mankind. Whatever the merits of Bloom’s evolutionary story, it fails to grasp the nature of creative imagination in children. Maurice Merleau-Ponty cautions against reading backward from the adult into the child. Seeing all that is adult existing in some minor form in children fails to capture those unique, and often lost, parts of childhood experience. In their imaginative play, children rarely confuse object and toy play with religion. Instead of fitting into adult metaphysical commitments, children’s imaginations challenge our organization of reality. The intensity and rigidity of children’s play with objects, including their fear of select ones, often seems to speak of objects, such as those from “The Stray Horse,” that are connected to a parallel world that intervenes weakly on our own. It is fantastical, but not as in an addition to our metaphysical commitments, but as a kind of barbarian reality. This paper takes up the challenge of childhood imagination as the phenomenological prehistory of our own creative imagination. It considers the work in psychoanalytic and phenomenological accounts of childhood memories and ties it to the creative imagination of authors like Hernández.
Welsh demonstrates Merleau-Ponty’s unique conception of the child’s development as inherently organized, meaningful, and engaged with the world, contrary to views that see the child as largely internally preoccupied and driven by instinctual demands. Welsh finds that Merleau-Ponty’s ideas about human psychology remain relevant in today’s growing field of child studies and that they provide important insights for philosophers, sociologists, and psychologists to better understand the human condition."
Below is a pdf of the preface.
"This is a philosophically interesting and valuable collection. I like its broad range of topics, its interdisciplinary character, and the fact that it made me think about Merleau-Ponty in unexpected and instructive ways." -- William S. Hamrick, coeditor of Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy: Dwelling on the Landscapes of Thought
Contributors include Justine Dymond, Sally Fischer, Elizabeth Grosz, Annemie Halsema, Maurice Hamington, Lawrence Hass, Greg Johnson, Patricia Locke, Rachel McCann, Janice McLane, Kelly Oliver, Rashmika Pandya, Gail Weiss, Talia Welsh, and Bruce Young.
Two conclusions emerge: The first is that one’s relationships with others will always be central in determining the social, political, and artistic forms that philosophical self-reflection will take. The second is that our practices of aesthetic judgment are bound up with our efforts as philosophers to adapt ourselves and our objects of interest to the inescapably historical and indeterminate conditions of experience.
The papers collected here address the issue that critical communities and aesthetic practices are never politically neutral and can never be abstracted from their particular contexts. It is for this reason that the contributors investigate the politics, not of laws, parties or state constitutions, but of open, indefinably critical communities such as audiences, peers and friends.
Critical Communities and Aesthetic Practices is distinctive in providing a current selection of prominent positions, written for this volume. Together, these comprise a pluralist, un-homogenized collection that brings into focus contemporary debates on critical and aesthetic practices.
The topic of work is something that Talia has been researching more recently. They define work and its variants from a phenomenological perspective. They discuss differences between cognition and thinking, work as meaning, and how people attempt to find value and meaning in science. They also discuss religion, criticisms about organized religion, and many other topics.
Talia Welsh has a PhD in philosophy and is currently a UC Foundation professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She spends most of her research with Merleau-Ponty and has translated his lectures given at Sorbonne in the volume, Child Psychology & Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952. You can find her work here.
Talia Welsh has a PhD in philosophy and is currently a UC Foundation professor of Philosophy and Women, Gender, and Sexuality studies at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She spends most of her research with Merleau-Ponty and has translated his lectures given at Sorbonne in the volume, Child Psychology & Pedagogy: The Sorbonne Lectures 1949-1952. You can find her work here.
In our discussion, there are questions about different kinds of ambivalence that mothers can experience: existential ambivalence – the personal experience of mixed feelings – and situational ambivalence – social constructs that pressure one to act in particular ways that may be contrary to one’s needs or desires. So, for example, situational ambivalence can affect a new mother’s decision to breastfeed. Both types of ambivalence can leave a person feeling as if there is no “right choice.”
We also discuss the idea of emerging adult ambivalence: the conflicting feelings that young adults have which may result in anxiety and depression due to social issues in the world and the everyday worries of a young college student. We also spoke about ART(Artificial Reproductive Technology), which undertones capitalism/ neoliberalism.
And, of course, we end with a time when Dr. Welsh ruined dinner.
This chapter addresses the construction of the idea of the deleterious effects of helicopter parenting and the popular advice on how to better parent. Myths of a bygone past when parenting was easier, natural, and less involved draw an obscure veil over inevitable and avoidable ambivalence in parenting. One finds that the solution to helicopter parenting is a rigorous disciplinary project on the part of the parents—what I call “meta-helicopter parenting.” Falling largely to mothers, one is encouraged to think one’s child is a project entirely dependent upon proper choices. Such ideas foster the neoliberal turn which makes addressing structural problems collectively elusive.