Shona's Response to Van Manen, Part 2

[Anonymous]

#783

Writing animated by desire harkens Gendlin’s Thinking at the Edge – the channels through which what needs or wants to be said may be understood. The pedagogical promise of discovering meaning, described by Van Manen, paints an uncannily similar picture of purposefully entering a place of intellectual uncertainty, “for the sake of being brought to the edge, where one may take off, on an unfulfillable (perhaps) but fine fight to finally write” (1). He articulates the effortful will to seek meaning as the desire behind writing.
“Reaching the perspective of the gaze”, reminds me of the process of repetition I recently observed in the Gauguin exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. From a single woodcut, Gauguin produced numerous print creations, all stemming from the same original starting point. This process of repetition brought new artistic ideas and manifestations of imagination and thought. His work may be perceived as surpassing the strict borders of any particular artistic medium. As Van Manen writes, the compositionist is “propelled to traverse the space of the text in search for another updraft- the perspective of the gaze” (1). By surpassing the boundaries of the original creation, further meaning may emerge.
In “Touching”, Van Manen’s citing of Bachelard on the forming power of words recalls our earlier discussion of the agentic capacity of writing from felt sense. Rather than a socially pre-written script which always already constructs our identities, language explored phenomenologically may arise in a “becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. Here expression creates being” (1). As the story unfolds in our telling, our perspective may broaden into greater meaning.
I am intrigued by Van Manen’s notion of a researcher-as-author charged with constructing a text from lived experience, which seeks to bring the reader “in touch with the phenomenological gaze” (2, Touching). I wish to ask which disciplines such reflective forms of writing would find a place in academia?
Van Manen’s statement at the end of “Traversing” that the writer becomes “depersonalized, an ‘it’ or neutral self- a self who produces scripture” (2), seems a way of expressing the profound possibilities of being and becoming in phenomenological writing; when the limitations of language are intersected through reflective thought. I was also left considering what is meant by his use of the word “scripture”?
I strongly identify with Van Manen’s descriptions of phenomenological writing and have used writing as a tool of self-reflection and meaning-making in my own life history. The wonder of engaging reflective thinking and mediums of expression certainly speaks to my life-motivation.

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