phenomonology

[Anonymous]

#750

I’m using up my space here just on Max Van Manen’s first 2011 post, defining phenomenological writing.

Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy tells me that “The discipline of phenomenology may be defined initially as the study of structures of experience, or consciousness. Literally, phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the ways we experience things, thus the meanings things have in our experience. Phenomenology studies conscious experience as experienced from the subjective or first person point of view.”

That is new to me. I’d say that the growth/process model of writing and composing is very closely aligned with it, see writing as a way to construct knowledge from within–subjectively. Van Manen’s post on inquiry through writing begins with descriptions of writing that feel very growth/process-ish.

“Writing is not the practice of some clever technique; neither is writing restricted to the moment where one sets pen to paper, or the fingers to the keyboard. 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….Writing is not just externalizing internal knowledge, it is not simply writing up one’s conclusions,…” (Manen). OK. It’s more than the physical act, the text, or mere transmission of thoughts and conclusions.

Growth/Process: Check, Check, Check.

“It is also helpful to be reminded that phenomenological inquiry-writing is based on the idea that no text is ever perfect, no interpretation is ever complete, no explication of meaning is ever final, no insight is beyond challenge.” (Manen).

Growth/Process: Check.

“Phenomenlogical writing is the very act of making contact with the things of our world. It is in this sense that we can say that to do research is to write and that the insights achieved depend on the right words and phrases, on styles and traditions, on metaphor and figures of speech, on argument and poetic image. And even then, writing can mean both insight or illusion. And these are values that cannot be decided, fixed or settled since the one always implies, hints at, or complicates the other.” (Manen).

Hmmmm. This feels like the felt sense version of growth/process with two interesting notes. First, it recognizes that this writing may not lead us to a truer place sometimes but to an illusion. (Some of us have worried about this part of our felt senses.) Second, it is surprisingly rigid, locked into the idea that we should be moving to the “right” words and phrases, that there is a single correct path there for us to find. Hmmmm.

[Sondra Perl]

#767

You’d have to explain where you see this in van Manen (as I don’t):
“Second, it is surprisingly rigid, locked into the idea that we should be moving to the “right” words and phrases, that there is a single correct path there for us to find. Hmmmm.”

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