dr. Helena De Preester

Academic titles:

  • Visiting research professor

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Publications

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  • 2024

    • Off the grid : activating histories of belgian graphic design

      De Bondt, S. (2024). Off the grid : activating histories of belgian graphic design. Ghent University. Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent, Belgium.
      Off the Grid: Activating Belgian Graphic Design Histories Sara De Bondt Off the Grid is a PhD in the arts focusing on Belgian graphic design history and its relevance to the field today. Grounded in archival research, it activates the histories it uncovers through writing, curating, designing, and publishing. The research sheds light on the understudied and under-collected histories of Belgian graphic design, particularly those between the end of World War II and the advent of the personal computer in the mid-1980s. It aims not only to enrich the knowledge and appreciation for graphic design produced in Belgium during this period but also to probe how these historical practices continue to shape contemporary graphic design. In so doing, it proposes novel ways to share and teach these histories through accessible graphic design archives, collections, and public programming. Off the Grid deploys alternative and collective ways of interpreting design heritage with particular attention to practices that eschew canonisation. These include work produced by women, non-Belgian designers based in Belgium, anonymous or collective authors, and designs created for educational and propaganda purposes, such as those supporting Belgian colonial rule. The research provides close readings of the work and lives of designers, including Sophie Alouf, Jeanine Behaeghel, Corneille Hannoset, and Herman Lampaert, and employs collaborative methodologies to involve historical figures, contemporary creators, and students in the process. The output of Off the Grid is manifested in three distinct forms. First, a series of time-based public events, including an exhibition (Off the Grid: Belgian Graphic Design from the 1960s and 1970s as Seen by Sara De Bondt) and two series of public talks (This is… and Talking Letterheads), all at Design Museum Gent (25.10 – 16.02.2020). Second, the constitution and dissemination of long-term archival resources: a series of video portraits of graphic designers active during the period; a physical archive of contemporary graphic design made by Sara De Bondt; and a new searchable personal online archive built around keywords (saradebondt.com). Third, published research and new writing, including an anthology of new contributions by scholars and designers (Off the Grid: Histories of Belgian Graphic Design, Occasional Papers, 2022); and two peer-reviewed essays, ‘Curating as Graphic Design Research’ (Journal for Artistic Research, December 2023) and ‘Jeanine Behaeghel (1940–1993)’ (Tijdschrift voor Interieurgeschiedenis en Design, no.45, 2024). In this way, the research of primary sources is integrated with the discursive and artistic components of a doctorate in arts, which are closely intertwined in this project. These components include exhibition scenography and graphics, curation of public programs, design of a visitor's guide, layout of magazine articles, and the development and design of a website. The research is conducted at KASK & Conservatorium – School of Arts Ghent and Ghent University under the supervision of Helena De Preester and Luc Derycke and under the guidance of Ruth Blacksell and Armand Mevis. Special thanks to Antony Hudek.
  • 2023

    • Art in times of stupidity : Stiegler’s politicization of art in the hyperindustrial age

      De Preester, H. (2023). Art in times of stupidity : Stiegler’s politicization of art in the hyperindustrial age. AZIMUTH (ROMA), 11(21), 101–114.
      According to Stiegler, contemporary toxic technologies have led to aesthetic disindividuation and aesthetic ‘conditioning’, substituting aesthetic ‘experience’ and amounting to its exploitation. Stiegler, however, also contends that the loss of individuation can be restored because of the pharmacological nature of technology. Moreover, he believes in the possibility of a “renaissance of the symbolic” in which art, artists and amateurs play a role. First, Stiegler considers the repeated encounter with works of art as a cure for symbolic misery and as an opportunity for individuation. Second, the role art and artists can play is part of the larger process of ‘adoption’ of contemporary forms of technology.More in particular, Stiegler points out that digital media occasion the restoration of the intimate connection between artistic production and aesthetic reception. Even though Stiegler is well aware that symbolic misery will not be lifted on the basis of artistic activity alone, he may be too optimistic about art’s possibility for deproletarianization and for adopting contemporary technologies.
    • Visual art and the reconstruction of the artist's gesture : phenomenological arguments for an alternative mirror theory

      De Preester, H. (2023). Visual art and the reconstruction of the artist’s gesture : phenomenological arguments for an alternative mirror theory. In B. Hopkins & D. De Santis (Eds.), Aesthetics, art, Heidegger, french philosophy (Vol. 21, pp. 139–153). https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003434801-10
      This contribution supports the idea that research on the beholder’s response to visual works of art benefits from recent suggestions from cognitive science about the role of embodied motor processes in experience. However, it argues that the current hypothesis of the beholder’s motor engagement that follows from the mirror neuron theory suffers from an inadequate view on the production of visual art, in particular with regard to the nature of the gestures involved. It therefore offers an account of the perception of visual works of art in which the role of embodied motor processes is central, but avoids a too “intentionalist” view on the artist’s gestures.
  • 2022

    • The object that technology is not and how we can relate to it

      De Preester, H. (2022). The object that technology is not and how we can relate to it. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09743-4
      I reply to two comments to my paper "Subjectivity and transcendental illusions in the Anthropocene," by Johannes Schick and Melentie Pandilovski. Schick expands on the possibility that technical objects become "other" in a Levinasian sense, making use of Simondon's three-layered structure of technical objects. His proposal is to free technical objects and install a different relationship between humankind and technology. I see two major difficulties in Schick's proposal. These difficulties are based on a number of features of current digital technology which make it difficult to enter the proposed ethical relationship with it. A first cluster of difficulties consists of the phenomena of blackboxing, the intimate interwovenness of inventing technologies and profit on all levels of the technical object, and the ownership of and control over technologies. A second cluster revolves around the impossibility of a symmetrical relationship with the hyperobject because of current technology's hyperobject-like nature. Next I discuss Pandilovski's comments, where I point out that phenomenology is more encompassing than the study of having conscious experiences, and that phenomenology is essentially a method, rather than a collection of results.
    • Subjectivity and transcendental illusions in the Anthropocene

      De Preester, H. (2022). Subjectivity and transcendental illusions in the Anthropocene. FOUNDATIONS OF SCIENCE, 27(1), 125–140. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-020-09733-6
      This contribution focuses on one member in particular of the anthropocenic triad Earth - technology - humankind, namely the current form of human subjectivity that characterizes humankind in the Anthropocene. Because knowledge, desire and behavior are always embedded in a particular form of subjectivity, it makes sense to look at the current subjective structure that embeds knowledge, desire and behavior. We want to move beyond the common psychological explanations that subjects are unable to correctly assess the consequences of their current technological lifestyle or unable to change their lifestyle because well-intended behavior is modified by factors such as laziness, lack of knowledge, seduction by convenience, etc. Instead, we will argue from a philosophical point of view that transcendental illusions play a central role in a contemporary account of subjectivity. Consumerism is considered as a means of not becoming a subject and framed in a profound ambivalence at the heart of our acting (consuming) against better knowledge. We appeal to collective transcendental conditions of subjectivity in the Anthropocene in terms of illusions without owners - a term borrowed from Robert Pfaller's work on interpassivity. Central in our account is the idea that illusions without owners are the conditions of possibility for the disconnection between knowledge and behavior - the characteristic par excellence of the Anthropocene.
  • 2021

    • Life is what you fill your attention with : the war for attention and the role of digital technology in the work of Bernard Stiegler

      De Preester, H. (2021). Life is what you fill your attention with : the war for attention and the role of digital technology in the work of Bernard Stiegler. PHENOMENOLOGY AND MIND, (20), 102–116. https://doi.org/10.17454/pam-2009
      This contribution focuses on the topic of attention and sets forth the main points of Bernard Stiegler’s analysis of the interplay between capitalist consumer society, the destruction of attention and the consequences for individual and collective life. We look at how current digital technologies in service of the needs of the market are a major factor in the destruction of attention and discuss two counterforces that do not destroy but form attention: education and meditation. If life is what you fill your attention with, then focusing or directing attention is one of the most valuable abilities for knowing how to live. Instead of letting our attention be hijacked by the market and the economic needs of neoliberal capitalism, being in charge of what happens to our attention may be a basic right that needs protection given the current conditions of the attention economy.
    • Descartes on the passions of the soul and internal emotions : two challenges for interoception research in emotions

      De Preester, H., & Dorsch, J. (2021). Descartes on the passions of the soul and internal emotions : two challenges for interoception research in emotions. DANISH YEARBOOK OF PHILOSOPHY, 54(1), 65–92. https://doi.org/10.1163/24689300-bja10021
      On the basis of Descartes’s account of the passions of the soul, we argue that current interoception-based theories of emotions cannot account for the hallmark of a passion of the soul, i.e., that its effects are felt as being in the soul itself. We also pay attention to the epistemic functions of the passions and to Descartes’s category of emotions that are caused and occur in the soul alone. Certain passions of the soul and certain internal (or intellectual) emotions are similar to what are today called ‘epistemic (or noetic) feelings’ and ‘epistemic emotions.’ Descartes’s work reflects another challenge for contemporary embodied cognition: how might epistemic affect be embodied? Since the signature of embodiment is increasingly understood as interoceptive, the challenge to interoceptive research is demonstrating the degree to which (epistemic) affect results from interoception. This challenge also implies that the locus of emotional experience is taken into account.
    • A radical phenomenology of the body : subjectivity and sensations in body image and body schema

      De Preester, H. (2021). A radical phenomenology of the body : subjectivity and sensations in body image and body schema. In Y. Ataria, S. Tanaka, & S. Gallager (Eds.), Body schema and body image : new directions (pp. 52–68). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198851721.003.0004
      The role of sensations for body experience and body representations such as body image and body schema seems indisputable. This chapter discusses the link between sensory input, the experience of one’s own body, and body representations such as body image and body schema. That happens on the basis of Michel Henry’s radical phenomenology of the body, which unites body and subjectivity and reconsiders the role of sensory input for the experience of the body and related representations. Without supporting, but inspired by, Henry’s ontological dualism between subjective and objective body, it is argued that the traditional view that considers sensory signals as all-important for bodily experience misses out a bodily dimension crucial for subjectivity—the body’s subjective dimension, not reigned by current sensory input. Cognitive science seems willing to accept representations that are over and above sensory input but still experiential in nature. The exact status of these ‘offline’ representations is, however, unclear. If it is true that these offline representations are responsible for crucial aspects of bodily subjective life (e.g., unity, ownership, presence), then it is unclear how these representations bring this experience about. Whereas online bodily representations are based on sensory input, offline bodily representations seem to be based on bodily experience over and above sensory life. In other words, they seem to represent or mediate what they are supposed to explain—the subjective body.
  • 2018

    • The interoceptive mind : from homeostasis to awareness

      Tsakiris, M., & De Preester, H. (Eds.). (2018). The interoceptive mind  : from homeostasis to awareness. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198811930.001.0001
      The Interoceptive Mind – From Homeostasis to Awareness - Oxford Scholarship Online Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content. Find in Library Find in Worldcat The Interoceptive Mind: From Homeostasis to Awareness Manos Tsakiris and Helena De Preester Abstract This volume focuses on the role of interoception for mental life and lived experience, from the perspectives of neurosciences, psychological sciences, and philosophy. Interoception is the body-to-brain axis of signals originating from the internal body and visceral organs (such as gastrointestinal, respiratory, hormonal, and circulatory systems), and plays a unique role in ensuring homeostasis. This volume goes beyond the traditional role of interoception for homeostasis and offers a state-of-the-art overview of and new insights into the role of interoception for mental life, awareness, subjectivity, affect, and cognition. Structured across three parts, this multidisciplinary volume highlights the role that interoceptive signals and awareness thereof play in our mental life (Part I), considers deficits in interoceptive processing and awareness in various mental health conditions but also the equally important role of interoception for well-being (Part II), and approaches interoception from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, representing a highly novel departure for philosophy of mind and subjectivity (Part III). The chapters share a common concern for what it means to experience oneself, for the crucial role of emotions, and for issues of health and well-being, discussed on the joint basis of our bodily existence and interoception. The research presented here will hopefully accelerate the much-anticipated coming of age of interoceptive research in psychology, cognitive neurosciences, and philosophy.
    • Subjectivity as a sentient perspective and the role of interoception

      De Preester, H. (2018). Subjectivity as a sentient perspective and the role of interoception. In M. Tsakiris & H. De Preester (Eds.), The interoceptive mind  : from homeostasis to awareness (pp. 293–320). https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198811930.003.0016

Type :

  • Journal article
  • Book chapter
  • Other
  • Edited book
  • All

Keywords :

  • Subjectivity,
  • Homeostasis,
  • Cognition,
  • Visceral,
  • Mental well-being,
  • Mental health,
  • Affect,
  • Embodiment,
  • Awareness,
  • Interception