Public Affects
Dewey’s philosophy of experience offers relevant methodological tools for analyzing the social ecology of public places and interactions. Focusing on possibilities for use and active engagement, it helps to capture the historical, environmental and symbolic dimensions of urban spaces. Examining expe...
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| Опубликовано в: : | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/ejpap, |
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| Главный автор: | |
| Формат: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Язык: | Anglais |
| Опубликовано: |
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
2026
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| Предметы: | |
| Online-ссылка: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Итог: | Dewey’s philosophy of experience offers relevant methodological tools for analyzing the social ecology of public places and interactions. Focusing on possibilities for use and active engagement, it helps to capture the historical, environmental and symbolic dimensions of urban spaces. Examining experiences in public space through Dewey’s aesthetics suggests considering affects and atmospheres in cities as meaningful, layered environmental properties deserving ethnographic and sociological attention. The question of how this affective understanding may inform social interactions – how it can take a shared and public dimension – is explored in the paper through the proposed notion of public affects. Secondly, the Deweyan approach to experience, as revived by Shusterman’s somaesthetics and by works in environmental and everyday aesthetics, might provide a relevant framework for critically assessing how urban places are perceived and lived in everyday life. Urban settings are not simply objects or material frames but experienced situations. They are designed but also shaped by bodily techniques, habits, cultural history, and institutions. Dewey’s pragmatist philosophy of experience, amplified by Shusterman’s somaesthetics, helps grasp this multifaceted complexity. Finally, this reading opens a path toward critically challenging dominant trends in urban planning: the exclusive control of technical expertise, the depoliticization of urban issues, and the decline of public spaces as arenas for democratic confrontation. Dewey’s views on experience may thus contribute to a critical social ecology of public life in urban environments. |
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