Kym Maclaren

Kym Maclaren founded the Transformative Justice Project (TJP) at Ryerson University. The Transformative Justice Project works, in collaboration with community organizations to:

1. Establish initiatives that address the social conditions leading to and resulting from incarceration;  and,
2. Develop other, more transformative and community-based, forms of justice.

TJP’s current project involves facilitating conversations between youth and previously incarcerated people who were involved in gang-associated street-life. The aim is to encourage reflection on the social conditions of street conflict, to open up a sense of other possible life trajectories, and to enhance community engagement and respect for self and others.  We're also aiming to institute a program inside prisons that will enable the same kind of conversation and reflection for incarcerated youth, with a focus on Black social history.

Selected Publications & Presentations

Edited Collections

• Morris, David and Kym Maclaren, eds. Time, Memory, Institution: Merleau-Ponty’s New Ontology of Self. Forthcoming, Ohio University Press, 2015.
• Maclaren, Kym, ed. Special Issue: Intimacy and Embodiment: Phenomenological Perspectives. Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)

Selected Articles, Chapters, and Commentaries

• “Intimacy as Transgression and the Problem of Freedom.” Puncta: Journal for Critical Phenomenology 1 (2018):18-40.
• “Merleau-Ponty on Human Development and the Retrospective Realization of Potential.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 16(4) (2017), 609-621.
• “The ‘entre-deux’ of Emotions: Emotional Institutions and their Dialectic.” In Perception and its Development in Merleau-Ponty's Phemenology, edited by John Russon and Kirsten Jacobson.  University of Toronto Press, (2017): 51-80.
• “The Magic Happens Inside Out: A Reflection on the Transformative Power of Self-Expression and Dialogical Inquiry in Inside-Out Prison Exchange Courses,” in “Engaged Philosophical Inquiry,” ed. Barbara Weber and Jennifer A. Vadenboncoeur, special issue, Mind, Culture, Activity 22, no.4 (2015): 371-385.
• “Touching Matters: Embodiments of Intimacy.” Emotion, Space and Society 13 (2014)
• “Emotional Clichés and Authentic Passions: A Phenomenological Revision of a Cognitive Theory of Emotion.” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, Volume 10, No. 1 (2011): 45-65.
• “Emotional Metamorphoses: The Role of Others in Becoming-Oneself”, in Embodiment and Agency: New Essays in Feminist Philosophy, edited by Susan Sherwin, Letitia Meynell, and Sue Campbell. Pennsylvania State University Press, (2009): 1-45.
• “Embodied Perceptions of Others as a Condition of Selfhood? Empirical and Phenomenological Considerations.” Journal of Consciousness Studies Vol. 15, No. 8 (2008): 63-93.
  
• “The Role of Emotion in an Existential Education: Insights from Hegel and Plato.” International Philosophical Quarterly Vol.48 (2008).