8-9th of June, 2026
University of Southern Denmark, Odense. 

Feeling in Time: Interpersonal Atmospheres and Temporally Extended Empathy

Atmospheres are typically characterised in terms of their spatiality; posited as 'quasi-objects' that fill space, experienced between subject and object. What this focus on space has obscured is the relationship between atmospheric perception and temporality. I argue that when we thematise specifically interpersonal atmospheres, we can understand atmospheric experience as a form of fully embodied and temporally extended empathy. What we feel when we enter a room and sense the atmosphere is not a static spatial property but a dynamic, unfolding arc of collective expressivity. I develop this account by drawing on Husserl's structure of time-consciousness and horizons, suggesting that it offers resources that spatial accounts of atmosphere do not.