| Post: | Associate Tutor |
| Location: | Arts A |
| Email: | D.J.Trigg@sussex.ac.uk |
| Personal homepage |
Biography
I did my undergraduate degree in Philosophy at the University of London Shortly after, I went on to do to an MA in Aesthetics at Sussex, submitting a dissertation on the work of Gaston Bachelard. In September 2008, I successfully defended my DPhil thesis in Berlin, "Memory and Place: a Phenomenological Study," which was supervised by Tanja Staehler and Paul Davies. My examiners were Professor Edward S. Casey (Stony Brook) and Celine Surprenant (University of Sussex). I have been a visiting scholar at Duquesne University and a guest lecturer at the University of Montana.
Role
Associate Philosophy Tutor
Office Hour (Spring/Summer 2010): 1-3pm on Wednesdays in room A177.
Research
Broadly, I am interested in the relationship between place, memory, and embodiment from a phenomenological perspective. I am especially interested in how liminal and ambiguous places can contribute to the formation of identity, both personal and collective.
My doctoral thesis, Memory and Place: a Phenomenological Study, asks the following question: how does the built and natural environment contribute to our sense of self? Traditionally, the response to this question has been to focus on notions of dwelling, locality, and home. The contribution my research makes to this field is to redirect the focus toward liminal, ambiguous, and transitory places. To this end, a large part of my thesis is spent phenomenologically examining the spatio-temporality of liminal places, with a specific appeal to their ambiguous memorability. Methodologically, I achieve this aim by building on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of the body, emphasising in particular the tension between cognitive and corporeal modes of intentionality. In doing so, I advance several new modes of place memory, all of which conspire to undermine the notion that certain places—emblematically the “home”—are more memorable than others.
In my book, The Aesthetics of Decay, I pursue a phenomenological analysis of place memory, which extends to the urban ruin. Establishing the ruin as a place of temporal subversion, I examine how rationality and nostalgia are contested by a model of progressive decline, embodied in the ruin in terms of the uncanny.
Teaching
For 09/10, I'll be teaching Reason and Experience, Introduction to Philosophy, and Aesthetics.
In previous years, I've taught Issues in Philosophy, Introduction to Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Society, State, Humanity,
I teach an interdisciplinary course through the International Sussex Summer School, called From Airports to Asylums: How Buildings Shape our Identity.
I also teach philosophy privately.
Publications
Books
The Memory of Place: a Phenomenology of the Uncanny (Forthcoming)
Forthcoming articles:
"The Architecture of Eroticism: Place, Death, and the Memory of Flesh" (forthcoming: Back to the Things Themselves: Architectural Experience, Memory and Thought, ed. Iris Aravot and Eran Neuman. Haifa, Technion I.I.T) (2010)
"The Disrupted Past: Between History and Memory" (Forthcoming: Time and Memory in Narrative. ed. Karl Simms and Shilpa Venkatachalam) (2009)
Recent articles:
"Place Becomes the Law" in Griffith Law Review, Vol. 17, Issue: 2, 2008
"The Everyday Uncanny: Cezanne and Merleau-Ponty on Art" in Naked Punch Vol. 1: Issue 4, 2005
Camouflage, Neil Leach, in Material Culture (Volume 40: Issues 2) (2009)
City of Panic, Paul Virilio in Journal for British Society for Phenomenology, Vol. 39, Issue 1, 2008
Deleuze and Geophilosophy, Mark Bontana and John Protevi in Ethics, Place, and Environment, Vol. 10, Issue 2, 2007
The Aesthetics of Ruins, Robert Ginsberg in Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 40, Issue 4, 2006
Other:
Contribution to New York Post (2008)
Interview with Mark Thwaite (2007)
Conferences:
See here.