Anthony Vincent Fernandez / Contingency and Existence

From August to October 2018, I had an enjoyable and productive stay at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, supported by a Research and Creative Activity Appointment from Kent State University. The Center provided an excellent environment to develop new projects, receive insightful and constructive feedback, and initiate interdisciplinary collaborations.

During my stay, I worked on a book project called Contingency and Existence: Foundations of Applied Phenomenology. The project is motivated by the challenges of applying classical phenomenology to the study of particular or contingent features of human life, such racial identity, gender difference, child development, somatic illness, disability, and psychopathology. Despite phenomenology’s original concern with experience as such, or the structures of any possible experience, today, phenomenologists are increasingly concerned with aspects of human experience that are particular to specific groups or populations. Phenomenology’s original concern with the universal has shifted—at least in part—toward a concern with particularity, difference, and contingency.

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