Alexis's Response to Van Mannen Pt. 1

[Larsson, Anna]

#791

“Writing has already begun, so to speak, when one has managed to enter the space of the text, the textorium. The space of the text is what we create in writing but it is also in some sense already there.” By this point, the point at which Van Mannen makes this assertion, he’s already depicted writing as participation in a process that’s “bigger” than writing, but centered around, initiated by, writing. What I like about “the space of the textorium” is that it gives value to the stages of the writing process where a writer is immersed in it but isn’t physically writing or typing or editing. Maybe I should give an example to clarify what I mean. I spend a lot of time writing in transit. I’m thinking and rethinking about my position on a topic, and I’m searching through my memories and inspirations for the clues to the language I need for the next stage in my writing process—the typing, pen-chewing part, the part where I go back and forth between pacing at the stove while kettle heats up and typing out a few sentences. It seems, also, that “the space of the text” involves an attitude of observation and response that would not be there without such a space.
“Phenomenological writing is the very act of making contact with the things of our world.” What is it to make contact? It seems that, for phenomenologists, it has something to do with the observation of the thing as it is apprehended, and response crafted around this observation, within the space of the textorium that the phenomenologist maintains by a practice of process-based writing that is never final or all-encompassing. This non-finality seems to be bad for creating a sense of mastery, but great for the time we live in, today, where it seems pretty hubristic to reach for mastery over a field of knowledge, especially given the slipperiness of language.

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