About the event
Phenomenology seeks to clarify the structures of lived experience, yet the question of the animal profoundly challenges its categories. The encounter with animals unsettles notions of embodiment, kinship, and world, revealing an ontological and ethical terrain of shared vulnerability and difference. Beyond abstract analysis, it invites phenomenology to engage with interanimal relations, imagination, and environmental concerns. This event explores these themes, asking how the presence—and absence—of animals transforms our understanding of experience, subjectivity, and coexistence, and how phenomenology might renew itself in response to this excess of life.
‘The Question of the Animal’ consists of two lectures by dr. Niki Young (University of Malta) and prof. Annabelle Dufourcq (Radboud University Nijmegen). Each lecture is 30-45 minutes follow by discussion.
Interested researchers and students are more than welcome to attend. Attendance is free, but please register in advance by sending an email to arjen.kleinherenbrink [at] ru.nl (arjen[dot]kleinherenbrink[at]ru[dot]nl) .
The event is organized by the Center for Contemporary European Philosophy (CCEP).
Practical information
Location: E15.39/41, 15th floor, Erasmus Building, Erasmusplein 1, Nijmegen.
14:45 – 15:00 Entrance, welcome, introductions
15:00 – 16:00 Dr. Niki Young
Not an Abyss but a Dynamo: Alphonso Lingis and the Question of the Animal.
16:00 – 16:15 Break
16:15 – 17:15 Prof. Annabelle Dufourcq
The Phenomenology of Transcendental Interanimality
17:30 – 18:15 Drinks at CultuurCafé (own expense)
About the speakers
Dr. Niki Young - Not an Abyss but a Dynamo
My lecture advocates for a philosophy of the animal rooted in Alphonso Lingis’ work, underscoring its potential to reshape debates on animal ontology, ethics, and environmental issues. Lingis challenges anthropocentrism by stressing the shared ontological ground between humans and animals, a ground characterized by excess, kinship, and interconnectedness. I relate this to Lingis’ ethical stance, which is also grounded in the phenomenology of the animal encounter.
Niki Young is lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Malta. His philosophical interests centre around 20th and 21st Century Continental thought, with a special focus on the incorporation of 20th century ideas into contemporary fields of research such as those of Posthumanism, Animal Studies, as well as New and Speculative forms of Realism and Materialism.
Prof. Annabelle Dufourcq - The Phenomenology of Transcendental Interanimality
Phenomenology can focus on the animal within—examining the presence or absence of animality in our own experience and embodied thought—or on our relations with other animals, though it has historically privileged the former. In this paper, I advocate for a phenomenology grounded in an empirical turn, attentive to the lived experience of other animals as external to, yet connected with our subjective life through imagination. I then show how this perspective can revolutionize our understanding of the transcendental ego in light of interanimal relations.
Annabelle Dufourcq is professor of philosophical anthropology and coordinator of the CCEP at Radboud University, and Socrates Professor by special appointment in Humanistic Philosophy at Wageningen University. Her research interests include phenomenology, animal studies, and the philosophy of imagination. Her most recent books are La dimension imaginaire du reel dans la Philosophie de Husserl; Merleau-Ponty: An Ontology of the Imaginary; The Imaginary of Animals; and most recently The Earth Intoxicated on Imagination.