Contact information

Email: Alia Al-Saji
Tel.: 514-398-1207
Office: LEA 932
Office hours (Fall 2009): Mondays 3-5pm

Degrees

B Arts & Sci (Philosophy), McMaster University, 1993
MA (Philosophy), Catholic University of Louvain, 1995
PhD (Philosophy), Emory University, 2002

Teaching and research areas

Twentieth century European philosophy
Phenomenology
Feminist Philosophy
Critical Race Theory
French Philosophy
Existentialism

Current research interests

My research explores questions of embodiment, memory and intersubjectivity in terms both of affectivity and perception. My work follows two trajectories.

(1) I am currently completing a book manuscript entitled Body Memories: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson and the time of intersubjectivity. The aim of this book is to think intersubjectivity in temporal terms. Crucial to my account is an elaboration of the time of embodiment, in its perceptual, affective and memorial dimensions. In developing this theory of embodied time, I base myself on the philosophies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Henri Bergson. At stake in my book is both a transformation of how intersubjectivity is conceived and a rethinking of time itself as not simply internal to consciousness or to the subject, but as the time of intercorporeity. This is a time of plural pasts, incompossible memories, and open futurity—the time of difference.

(2) I have been engaged in offering a feminist analysis of representations of Muslim women in contemporary Western imaginaries by questioning the ways in which race and gender are at play in representations of the Muslim headscarf or “veil”. I have published articles on “the French headscarf affair” and on the use of a rhetoric of freedom to justify the U.S.-led war on Afghanistan. I am currently working on a book-length manuscript on this topic entitled Veiling, Feminism, and Cultural Racism.

These two trajectories of my research come together in terms of a project to theoretically elaborate the critical and ethical potential of vision. This project draws on phenomenological, feminist and critical-race analyses of objectifying—specifically racializing—ways of seeing. I am carrying out this project by means of a grant on Merleau-Ponty and the phenomenology of race from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2009-2012).

Publications

“Bodies and Sensings: On the Uses of Husserlian Phenomenology for Feminist Theory.” Special Issue on Phenomenology and Feminism, ed. Sara Heinämaa and Lanei Rodemeyer, Continental Philosophy Review, forthcoming, 32 pp.

“Muslim Women and the Rhetoric of Freedom.” In Constructing the Nation: A Race and Nationalism Reader, ed. Mariana Ortega and Linda Martín Alcoff. Albany: State University of New York Press, forthcoming October 2009, 26 pp.

“A Phenomenology of Critical-Ethical Vision: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the question of seeing differently.” Chiasmi International: Publication trilingue autour de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty, Vol. 11 (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin), 2009, 24 pp.

“An absence that counts in the world: Merleau-Ponty’s later philosophy of time in light of Bernet’s ‘Einleitung’.” Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, vol. 40, no. 2, May 2009, pp. 207-227.

“Voiles racialisés : La femme musulmane dans les imaginaires occidentaux.” Les ateliers de l’éthique: la revue du CRÉUM , vol. 3 no. 2, Automne/Autumn 2008: Is Feminism Just for Feminists?/Le féminisme n’intéresserait-il que les féministes? Numéro dirigé par Marguerite Deslauriers et Monique Lanoix. This article may be viewed online HERE. To hear the Radio-CRÉUM emission with an interview of the author:HERE.

“‘A Past Which Has Never Been Present’: Bergsonian Dimensions in Merleau-Ponty’s Theory of the Prepersonal.” Research in Phenomenology, vol. 38, issue 1, February 2008, pp. 41-71.

“The Temporality of Life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the Immemorial Past.” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, vol. XLV, Summer 2007, pp. 177-206. This article may be viewed online HERE.

“Vision, Mirror and Expression: The Genesis of the Ethical Body in Merleau-Ponty’s Later Works.” Interrogating Ethics: Embodying the Good in Merleau-Ponty, eds. James Hatley, Janice McLane and Christian Diehm. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2006, pp. 39-63.

“Bergson’sche Spuren in Sartres Philosophie: Emotion und Negation.” Über Sartre: Perspektiven und Kritiken, hrsg. von Thomas R. Flynn, Peter Kampits und Erik M. Vogt. Wien: Verlag Turia + Kant, 2005, 17-54.

“La vision dans le miroir: L’intercorporéité comme commencement d’une éthique dans L’Œil et l’Esprit,” Chiasmi International: Publication trilingue autour de la pensée de Merleau-Ponty, Vol. 6 (Paris: Librarie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2005), pp. 253-272.

“The Memory of Another Past: Bergson, Deleuze and a new theory of time.” Continental Philosophy Review, Vol. 37, no. 2, 2004, pp. 203-239. This article may be viewed online HERE.

“Le parcours de la mémoire, Le passé-présent” in Politique et filiation, sous la direction de François Noudelmann (Paris: Éditions Kimé, 2004), pp. 35-55

“Merleau-Ponty and Bergson: Bodies of Expression and Temporalities in the Flesh,” Philosophy Today, Volume 45:5, SPEP supplement 2001, pp. 110-123.

“The Site of Affect in Husserl’s Phenomenology: Sensations and the constitution of the lived Body,” Philosophy Today , Volume 44, SPEP supplement 2000, pp. 51-59.

Selected Book Reviews

Review of Iris Marion Young, On Female Body Experience: “Throwing Like a Girl” and Other Essays (Oxford University Press, 2005). In Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, October 2005, 5 pp. (Invited book review)

Review of Leonard Lawlor, Thinking through French Philosophy: The Being of the Question (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003). In Bulletin de la Société Américaine de Philosophie de Langue Française, Vol. XIV, no. 2, Fall 2004, pp. 134-140.

Selection of Recent Public Presentations

“A Feminist Dilemma? Veiling, gender oppression, and racism.” Feminist Responses to the Bouchard-Taylor Commission, Symposium organized by MCRTW, McGill University, November 2008.

“The Winding Line: Seeing laterally with Merleau-Ponty.” Invited session for Merleau-Ponty’s Centenary. Forty-seventh Annual Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, October 2008.

“Vision, Veiling, and Cultural Racism.” Symposium on Interpreting Fashion, The Global Humanities Center, George Washington University, Washington DC, April 2008.

“Cultural Racism: Vision, veiling and the invisibility of hybrid subjectivity.” Forty-sixth Annual Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, DePaul and Northwestern Universities, Chicago, IL, November 2007.

“A Phenomenology of Critical-Ethical Vision.” Workshop of the SSHRC Research Group on Philosophical Conceptions of Sexual Difference and Embodiment, Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, October, 2007.

“Sensings and Bodies: A Feminist Reading of Husserl’s Ideas II.” Thirty-seventh Annual Meeting of the Husserl Circle. Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, April 2007.

“An Intersubjective Theory of Memory: Bergson, Deleuze and Intuition as Listening.” Composer au XXIe siècle: processus et philosophies. Colloque de l’Observatoire international de la création musicale (OICM), Faculté de musique, Université de Montréal, March 2007.

“Seeing Differently? Perspectives for Ethical and Critical Vision in Merleau-Ponty and Bergson.” Thirty-first Annual Conference of the International Merleau-Ponty Circle, George Mason University, Arlington, VA, October 2006.

“Husserl and the Fluidity of Bodies: A Feminist Reading of Ideas II.” Forty-fifth Annual Conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Villanova University, Philadelphia, PA, October 2006.

“‘A Past Which Has Never Been Present’: Toward an Alternative Theory of the Prepersonal in Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception.” Keynote Address, Concordia University Graduate Philosophy Students’ Association Conference, May 2006.

“Seeing Differently: Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Life as Vision.” Forty-fourth Annual conference of the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy, Utah Valley State College, Salt Lake City, Utah, October 2005.

“Bergson, Deleuze and the Virtual Image.” Presented at Thinking in Time, Henri Bergson: An Interdisciplinary Conference. University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, April 2005.

Major Research Grants and Fellowships

SSHRC Standard Research Grant (PI) for the project entitled “Vision, race, and ethics: a phenomenological investigation of racializing perception.” McGill University, 2009-2012.

Residence Fellowship, The Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, Winter term 2009.

SSHRC Standard Research Grant for the project entitled “Gender and Philosophical Conceptions of Sexual Difference and of Embodiment.” Co-authored with Marguerite Deslauriers (PI, McGill University) and Cressida Heyes (U of Alberta). McGill University, 2004-2007.

FQRSC Établissement de nouveaux chercheurs Grant (PI) for the project entitled “Vers une théorie critique de la nature de la sensation: repenser les concepts du temps et du corps dans la philosophie du xxe siècle.” McGill University, 2003-2006.

Institute for the Public Life of Arts and Ideas