Edward Casey & the Phenomenology of Travel

Summer is fully upon us - the time when many of us are on the move, enjoying different locales, being outside, spending quality time with others.

Edward Casey is a contemporary phenomenologist best known for his work on the phenomenology of place, and he has written numerous books and articles on this subject, taken from different angles. In Thinking in Transit, Casey invites us to reconsider thinking not as something that happens from a fixed standpoint, but as an activity shaped by movement, passage, and being on the way. Our reflection emerges from journeys, crossings, detours, and the lived experience of transition itself.

In this time-limited group, we will explore Casey's phenomenology of movement and place, asking how thought is transformed when we attend to what occurs between points of arrival. What do we learn about ourselves in motion, in transit, in different lands? Casey's work - and phenomenology generally - invites us to inquire what happens to us when we travel or relocate, even temporarily. Often we might travel to different places and treating those places as objects to gaze upon to entertain us. But what happens when we explore those places from a more phenomenological standpoint? What can we learn about the subjectivity of a place - what is it to know a place on its own terms? Can we experience a sense of intersubjectivity with a place? What are the existential feelings of a place? I am currently working on a book and, as part of doing field research for that book, I have been 'on the move' approximately every 6 weeks for the past year. I can definitely attest from first-person experience that my thinking has been radically shifted by different experiences in a variety of different lands.

Casey is writing in the lineage of Merleau-Ponty, whose phenomenology is distinctive for its focus on embodiment and particularly motor intentionality. As such, this group will be of interest to anyone who attended my prior groups on Merleau-Ponty, but certainly anyone interested in phenomenology is welcome. Anyone interested in environmental phenomenology will probably find this of interest as well, as well as people with interest in land/nature-based or Indigenous epistemologies.

It will follow my usual format: doing a short reading ahead of time, watching a short video together, and then discussing the video and the reading. Casey's book will be the core text, but I may pepper in supplemental readings as well to augment our discussion. The readings will be confirmed a week ahead of time so you have time to read. This is a hands-raised meetup where we will endeavor to stay close to the source material, and comments will be prioritized from those who have done the reading.

Week 1: To situate our discussion of the topic, we have three quite short readings:

• The Preface to Casey's Fate of Place https://drive.proton.me/urls/Q7T786XMEW#wgEAfT2T73yY

• The Preface to Casey's Thinking in Transit
https://drive.proton.me/urls/93GSM9CQ18#9lwCRqxt2kJw

• The Introduction to Cataldi & Hamrick's Merleau-Ponty and Environmental Philosophy (read pp. 1-5 only if short on time; otherwise read the whole chapter)
https://drive.proton.me/urls/EJRCW9SDK8#da2ibBajBkRx

Weeks 2 onward - to be confirmed each week, primarily focused on Thinking in Transit, with supplemental readings TBD.