Department Member, Faculty of Philosophy
About
I am a Research Master student in philosophy. I specialize in political philosophy, and the philosophy of interpretive sciences and practices.
I am currently working on three projects:
(1) Conceptualizing citizenship compounds
Drawing on Blending Theory in cognitive linguistics, I analyse the rise of four novel adjective-noun combinations: scientific, religious, economic and cultural citizenship. I use them as a window into the wider phenomenon of the differentiation of citizenship, which I evaluate philosophically.
Citizenship is widely considered to be an 'essentially contested' normative concept. I aim to show that adjectives modify citizenship not only normatively, but in other ways as well. There are multiple kinds of citizenship differentiation and political philosophy should be sensitive to their differences.
(2) Literacy for citizenship education: from knowledge to interpretation
The last decade has seen the rise of citizenship education in several European democracies. Educationalists who regard civic literacy as a central element of citizenship education tend to reduce it to the possession of knowledge about political institutions and procedures. Instead, I argue that citizenship education should involve a richer conception of literacy as interpretive competence.
To develop this richer conception of civic literacy I draw on three approaches to interpretation: Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics, Jeffrey Alexander's structural hermeneutics, and emerging combinations of cognitive linguistics with critical discourse analysis. What do these theoretical approaches have to offer to practitioners in citizenship education?
(3) The political significance of distanciation.
Building on Hannah Arendt and Paul Ricoeur, I develop a hermeneutical-phenomenological view of political participation. On this view, engaging in politics involves a movement of 'taking a distance' from everday thinking patterns and language use. Citizenship is not just about engagement but involves a dialectic of participation and distanciation.
I confront this philosophical idea with work in social science on distancing yourself from the here and now. In cognitive linguistics I draw on Conceptual Metaphor, Blending Theory and Discourse Space Theory. In sociology I focus on Talcott Parsons' concept of generalization, and more recent applications of it in Jeffrey Alexanders structural hermeneutics.
