Turning Emotion Inside Out with Ed Casey and Merleau-Ponty

In Turning Emotion Inside Out: Affective Life Beyond the Subject (2021), Edward S. Casey challenges the commonplace assumption that our emotions are to be located inside our minds, brains, hearts, or bodies. Instead, he invites us to rethink our emotions as fundamentally, although not entirely, emerging from outside and around the self, redirecting our attention from felt interiority to the emotions located in the world around us, beyond the confines of subjectivity.

This book begins with a brief critique of internalist views of emotion that hold that feelings are sequestered within a subject. Casey affirms that while certain emotions are felt as resonating within our subjectivity, many others are experienced as occurring outside any such subjectivity. These include intentional or expressive feelings that transpire between ourselves and others, such as an angry exchange between two people, as well as emotions or affects that come to us from beyond ourselves. Casey claims that such far‑out emotions must be recognized in a full picture of affective life. In this way, the book proposes to “turn emotion inside out.”

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Welcome everyone to this meetup series (starting November 14) hosted by Cece and Philip!

This will be a three hour meetup. For the first two hours we will be talking about Edward Casey's fascinating book:

• Turning Emotion Inside Out: Affective Life Beyond the Subject (2021) (scroll to the bottom for the reading schedule and materials 👇)

For the last hour we will be talking about a very introductory book about Maurice Merleau-Ponty (since Ed Caaey's approach to phenomenology is heavily indebted to Merleau-Ponty).

• Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Merleau-Ponty and Phenomenology of Perception by Komarine Romdenh-Romluc

The format will be Philip's usual "accelerated live read" format. What this means is that each participant will be expected to read roughly 10 pages before each session from each book. Each participant will have the option of picking a few paragraphs they especially want to focus on. We will then do a live read on the paragraphs that the participants found most interesting when they did the assigned reading.

People who have not done the reading are welcome to attend this meetup. However if you want to TALK during the meetup it is essential that you do the reading. We mean it! It is essential that the direction of the conversation be influenced only by people who have actually done the reading. You may think you are so brilliant and wonderful that you can come up with great points even if you do not do the reading. You probably are brilliant and wonderful — no argument there. But you still have to do the reading if you want to talk in this meetup. REALLY.

Please note that this is a "raise hands" meetup and has a highly structured format, not an anarchy-based one. This is partly for philosophical reasons: We want to discourage a simple-minded rapid fire "gotcha!" approach to philosophy. But our highly structured format is also for disability related reasons that Philip can explain if required.

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The READING SCHEDULE for the first 3 sessions are:

(A pdf of the Casey is available here and a pdf of the Romdenh-Romluc is here.)

Session One (November 14)

• In the Casey book: Please read up to page 13
• In the Romdenh-Romluc book: Please read up to page 11

Session Two

• In the Casey book: Please read up to page 27
• In the Romdenh-Romluc book: Please read up to page 16

Session Three

• In the Casey book: Please read up to page 36
• In the Romdenh-Romluc book: Please read up to page 24

After that, the readings will be posted on this webpage.