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Kym Maclaren

Kym Maclaren

Associate Professor
EducationBA (Toronto); PhD (Pennsylvania State)
OfficeJOR-418
Phone647-270-4959
Areas of ExpertisePhenomenology; Existentialism; 20th century French philosophy (especially Merleau-Ponty); Philosophy of Mind and Embodiment; Philosophical Psychology; Social Philosophy
https://torontomu.academia.edu/KymMaclaren (external link) 

I'm a phenomenologist, specializing in Merleau-Ponty's thought, but also very influenced by Beauvoir, Sartre, and Heidegger (and Hegel, too, if you'll allow me to count him as a phenomenologist). Increasingly, Deleuze and Guattari play a role in my thinking, too.  My work revolves around issues of intersubjectivity, embodiment, human development and its social conditions, emotion and transformation, and group dynamics that exceed and inform any group member's plan or action. I also like to learn from, and take up critically, scientific literature in these areas.

Since 2012, I have been teaching courses in prison and to people on parole, based on the  (external link) Walls to Bridges program. Collaborating with previously incarcerated students who, in various ways, are seeking to transform our social world for the better, I have initiated the Transformative Justice Project (TJP) at Toronto Metropolitan University.  The TJP aspires, through working with community organizations, to help create spaces for reflection on the social conditions leading to and resulting from incarceration, and to support and develop community programs that facilitate more transformative and community-based forms of justice.

 

Selected Publications & Presentations

Edited Collections

  • Morris, David and Kym Maclaren, eds. Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of Self. Ohio University Press, 2015.
  • Maclaren, Kym, ed. Special Issue: Intimacy and Embodiment: Phenomenological Perspectives. Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)

Selected Articles, Chapters, and Commentaries

  • (co-authored with the Re-imagining Re-Entry Public Philosophy Group) “Being-at-Home and Being-Unhomed in Prison” in The Philosopher, April 2024.
  • “Merleau-Ponty, the Improvisatory Body, and Humans as Revolutionary Animals” in Transformation and the History of Philosophy, edited by Anthony Bruno and Justin Vlasits. Routledge, (2024): 265-283.
  • “Intimacy as Transgression and the Problem of Freedom.” Puncta: Journal for Critical Phenomenology 1 (2018):18-40.
  • “Merleau-Ponty on Human Development and the Retrospective Realization of Potential.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(4) (2017), 609-621.
  • “The ‘entre-deux’ of Emotions: Emotional Institutions and their Dialectic.” In Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phemenology, edited by John Russon and Kirsten Jacobson.  University of Toronto Press, (2017): 51-80.
  • “The Magic Happens Inside Out: A Reflection on the Transformative Power of Self-Expression and Dialogical Inquiry in Inside-Out Prison Exchange Courses,” in “Engaged Philosophical Inquiry,” ed. Barbara Weber and Jennifer A. Vadenboncoeur, special issue, Mind, Culture, Activity 22, no.4 (2015): 371-385.
  • “Touching Matters: Embodiments of Intimacy.” Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)
  • “Emotional Clichés and Authentic Passions: A Phenomenological Revision of a Cognitive Theory of Emotion.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 10, No. 1 (2011): 45-65.
  • “Emotional Metamorphoses: The Role of Others in Becoming-Oneself”, in Embodiment and Agency: New Essays in Feminist Philosophy, edited by Susan Sherwin, Letitia Meynell, and Sue Campbell. Pennsylvania State University Press, (2009): 1-45.
  • “Embodied Perceptions of Others as a Condition of Selfhood? Empirical and Phenomenological Considerations.” Journal of Consciousness Studies Vol. 15, No. 8 (2008): 63-93.
  • “The Role of Emotion in an Existential Education: Insights from Hegel and Plato.” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.48 (2008).
 (PDF file)  Letter to Prospective Graduate Students