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Thomas Payre

Mr Thomas Payre

(he/him)

Research student

School of English, Communication and Philosophy

Email
PayreT@cardiff.ac.uk

Overview

Since October 2022, I am a full-time doctoral researcher in philosophy at Cardiff University. I enjoy the privilege of being supervised by Doctor Jonathan Mitchell and Professor Jonathan Webber.


Working along the intersections of phenomenology, French philosophy, literary studies and linguistics, my research project examines the importance of a way of doing phenomenology the practitioners of which I will call ‘literary-phenomenologists’.

Research themes:
- French Phenomenology
- Phenomenology of Literature
- Literary Studies & Style

Please do not hesitate to reach out if you are interested in my research – or for any other query.

Research

My research consists in an analysis of the close relationship between literary modes of expression and phenomenological method in four authors’ works: Marcel Proust, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Frantz Fanon. The overarching aim is to argue for the importance of a way of doing phenomenology the practitioners of which I will call ‘literary-phenomenologists’. In the case of each author, I will document the problems they either detail or implicitly reveal in traditionally philosophical descriptive methods, and the specific way in which they embody this alternative distinctive way of doing phenomenology, as ‘literary-phenomenologists’. I am also interested to see the way this distinctive way of doing phenomenology affects concrete analyses of specific phenomena (e.g., the temporal flow of experiences, the specific character of certain kinds of recollective experiences). Finally, I will determine whether this supposed switch to ‘literary-phenomenology’ marks out a methodological turning point in phenomenology, or whether versions of this idea can be found in nascent form in classical phenomenologists such as Husserl and Heidegger. 

Thesis

Literary-phenomenologists. Does literary writing and style reveal a new descriptive method in Phenomenology?

Teaching

  • 2022 Autumn semester: Seminar Tutor of the 'Moral & Political Philosophy' module.
  • 2023 Spring semester: Seminar Tutor of the 'Mind, Thought & Reality' module.