Kelly Herbison

Merleau-Ponty suggests that we access an artist’s “whole world” through her activity, and that his friend is “wholly present” in his “manner of saying hello and goodbye”. While these thoughts may be appealing, their phenomenological structure is not straightforward, and Merleau-Ponty does not dedicate much time to describing these revelatory encounters outside of the aesthetic domain. The aim of this paper is to remedy this by bringing into relief and adding some conceptual scaffolding to his notion of “style” so that it can be used to describe second-personal phenomena. It is argued that to grasp style is to grasp what is circumscribed in the other’s intentional conduct, which I contend is helpfully understood as a process of “seeing with” another in second-personal space.

The phenomena of call-outs and call-ins are fiercely debated. Are they mere instances of virtue signaling? Or can they actually perform social justice work? This paper gains purchase on these questions by focusing on how language users negotiate norms in speech. The authors contend that norm-enacting speech not only makes a norm salient in a context but also creates conversational conditions that motivate adherence to that norm. Recognizing this allows us to define call-outs and call-ins: the act of calling-out brings with it the presupposition that its target's behavior is norm-violating, whereas the act of calling-in simply presupposes its target's willingness to revise their belief. With these definitions at hand, we evaluate whether call-outs and call-ins are suitable tools for combating social injustice.