I recently did an interview about my book! Giorgi Vachnadze has a youtube channel called, The Silence of Savoir, and he asked if he could host me for an interview.
It was really fun talking about the book with him. He had great questions and I think the video gives a good summary of the book! Thank you, Giorgi!
Enjoy the interview!
I had the opportunity to be on a panel with my colleagues from the University of Mary at the American Catholic Philosophical Association in November 2023 in Houston, Texas. The title of the panel was: “Tradition for Today: A Panel Discussion on Philosophical Pedagogy.”
Here is an excerpt from what I shared:
I want to consider two aspects of tradition that are often overlooked: how tradition is sustained dynamically and how tradition is created transgressively. I believe that these two aspects of tradition will shed light on why and how we ought to teach the history of philosophy and perhaps help resolve some of the tension between the contrary positions of my two colleagues. I should add that these thoughts on tradition are heavily influenced by Foucault’s History of Madness and Philipp Rosemann’s Charred Root of Meaning.
I was invited to participate in a Colloquium put on by the Hildebrand Project in early November at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. It was my first time reading Alice von Hildebrand, but I was thankful to learn more about her and meet some wonderful scholars there.
Here is the opening to my response which includes a summary of the Savage’s paper.
“Thank you, Deborah, so much for your paper. I enjoyed reading it and it helped clarify for me some of the deeper motivations that are behind Alice von Hildebrand’s ideas. I’ll try and summarize what I saw as the main points. Savage’s paper draws on Alice von Hildebrand as well as two of her primary sources, Karl Stern and Gertrude LeFort, to demonstrate the essential role that women have in combatting a purely technological approach to life. Savage argues that because of who women are, we can offer a special antidote to the problems of technology; these unique gifts of women, she says, according to Hildebrand, include things such as a focus on the “personal, the living, the concrete, the heart” (p. 2) and the actions of “prayer, sacrifice and love” (p. 3). Savage details for us where these gifts may come from by turning to Stern which includes a phenomenological account of the differing bodily experiences between men and women (pp. 5-6). Next, she turns to LeFort to discuss the idea of receptivity as another gift that women can offer. I see Savage’s conclusion as an empowering call to both men and women to be who we are made to be so that we can respond to the challenges posed by technology today.
In my response, I would like to further the conversation by first talking more about technology — how to define it and how we may relate to it — and second, by asking about this call to combat technology — who is giving it and to whom is it directed.”
My review of Richard Kearney’s excellent book, Touch, has been published in Crossings: The International Network of Philosophy and Religion Journal.
You can read it online here.
Giorgi Vachnadze has written a review of my book here at Phenomenological Reviews. Check it out!
I am very grateful to him for writing such a detailed and thorough review. It is clear that he carefully read my book. As a result, he is able to offer such an engaging synthesis of its contents. I feel that he captures the spirit of what I am doing. He also notes on the organization and accessibility of the book which I was happy to hear as that is always one of my goals in writing.
At the end of the review, Vachnadze criticizes the book for ultimately not being in the spirit of Foucault because I do posit a kind of unified account of the body. This criticism is not surprising as I know other Foucault scholars may feel similarly. But I believe that in order to say anything, we need to assume some kind of unity of meaning and, as I argue, even Foucault implicitly does this with his implied subject and his overarching unreason.
Nevertheless, I hope this review prompts many people to read my book and continue the conversation. Thank you, Giorgi, for the immense time and effort that you spent reading my book and writing this review.
Through Wonder 