Wilson and colleagues (Wilson et al. 2019) argue that an intersectional approach to the clinical encounter can facilitate trust and understanding between patients and clinicians. An intersectional...

As the COVID-19 crisis unfolded, older people in the Netherlands were framed as essentially vulnerable. In the public discourse, the figure of the “vulnerable senior” rose to unprecedented prominence. Taking a critical-phenomenological approach, we combine an empirical study with philosophical reflection, drawing on phenomenological and post-structuralist work on vulnerability and precarity to interpret quotes from daily newspapers and other media. This approach leads us to distinguish three forms of vulnerability: (1) vulnerability as discursive effect; (2) vulnerability as unrealizable; and (3) (...) vulnerability as creative appropriation. We conclude that the COVID-19 crisis has reinforced the entanglement of age and vulnerability and has led to novel social distinctions and labels. These labels harbor harmful stereotypes and are in constant need of critical evaluation. Still, the people who are affected by them are not passively dominated; rather, they exhibit a certain freedom in re-interpreting and challenging their situation. It is this attention to the entanglement of discourse and lived experience that situates our research in the broader field of critical phenomenology. (shrink)

In this essay, I read Freud and Merleau-Ponty as voices for a more perceptive and nuanced discourse on the child. Their works, I suggest, contain two complementary approaches in this direction. The first approach concerns the structural asymmetry of child and adult. In his early writings, Freud assumes a radical break between the child’s and the adult’s sexualities. Taking seriously this assumption of asymmetry cautions us against the hasty application of adult standards to the child. The second approach concerns what (...) I would call a “thick description” of the child’s lived experience. Merleau-Ponty exemplifies this approach in his lectures on child psychology and the notion of institution, where he develops a concrete, phenomenologically informed account of childhood and puberty. (shrink)