Guest Lecture | Falling and Being Uplifted
20 mai à 10:00 - 11:30
A Theoretical Experiment on Kinaesthetic Empathy
Christine Leroy is a philosopher and dancer. Drawing on her book Kinaesthetic Empathy, Ethics and Care: A Phenomenology of Dance (trans. Anna Pakes; Routledge, 2025), she develops a philosophy of dance that foregrounds the psychological, aesthetic, and ethical significance of dancer-viewer interaction in the moment of performance. She brings together phenomenology, psychoanalysis, dance studies, and care ethics to analyse kinaesthetic empathy as a form of intersubjective performance.
According to Leroy, through the interweaving between the corporealities of dancer and viewer, each party supports or upholds the other in a process of mutual care: dance movement’s play with gravity alleviates the weight of repressed desire, redefines the contours of the body-image, and enables psychological self-repair. Through projection into the body of another, we develop independence and autonomy as subjects even in the midst of relational being. This establishes a corporeal basis for ethics that reveals how a return to the moving body through dance helps lay the foundations for a more humane society.
The talk will focus specifically on phenomenological accounts of empathy as an embodied disposition to move towards and be moved by the other. After tracing the conceptual history of Einfühlung, Leroy shows how dance and somatic practices exemplify empathy’s motor dimension, and how they open a new path for care ethics: the lived body as a medium for apprehending the other and attuning to their feelings.
Informations pratiques
- le mercredi 20 mai 2026, à 10h/Wednesday 20th April, at 10:00 am
- à l’university of Humanistic Studies, Kromme Nieuwegracht 29, Utrecht, room 1.22
- pour toute question, contacter Andries Hiskes à l’adresse a.hiskes@uvh.nl/for any questions, contact a.hiskes@uvh.nl
This talk is made possible in 2026 thanks to the support of the Maison des Sciences Humaines et Sociales Paris Nord and the University of Humanistic Studies.
Un projet de recherche qui bénéficie du soutien de la MSH Paris Nord dans le cadre de son appel à projets.
