Phenomenological Practice Research Articles

Decelerating Education

Current educative practices have given rise to the predominant pressure to increase production and speed in academic work and education in general. Educators need to ask whether conceiving of education in such terms is what we really want our children and youth to experience. In this paper, we aim to interrogate the question of how a deceleration of education is possible, and why this would be desirable for students and teachers. We do this in a circuitous way, by exploring four exercises in pedagogical deceleration. These exercises are inspired by philological, didactical, pedagogical, and phenomenological practices.

Mindfulness, Phenomenology, and Psychological Science

Most present-day research on mindfulness treats mindfulness as a variable that is studied in relation to other variables. Although this research may provide us with important knowledge at the population level and mechanism level, it contributes little to our understanding of the phenomenon of mindfulness as it is experienced and enacted at the person level. The present paper takes a person-oriented phenomenological perspective on mindfulness, comparing this perspective with that of von Fircks’ (2023). In a first part of the paper, mindfulness is discussed as a phenomenological practice that can be studied by means of experimental phenomenology. It is argued that there is room for the development of an immense variety of personalized mindfulness practices that may serve people’s health and well-being. The second part of the paper contains a brief discussion of the possible role of mindful observation and reflection in psychological research. It is argued that mindfulness skills may be important both for improving the quality of phenomenological observation and to facilitate creative thinking in connection with the development of psychological theory. A main implication is that an integration between mindfulness and phenomenology may serve as an important part of this process.

Phenomenology Out of Bounds? Jean-Yves Lacoste’s Phenomenology and the Presence of God

This article articulates Jean-Yves Lacoste’s account of phenomenology. It does so by tracing Lacoste’s relation to Husserl. Although the influence of Heidegger on Lacoste’s thinking has been sufficiently studied, his relation to the father of phenomenology perhaps is not. The aim of this essay is to see whether Lacoste’s practice of phenomenology still qualifies as phenomenology proper or whether, as some might be inclined to think, it is an improper venturing into the terrain of theology. For this, we offer an account both of Lacoste’s conception of “theological thinking” and of the phenomenon he describes so beautifully, the presence of God in liturgical and sacramental presence. This article concludes by, perhaps, putting into parentheses some of Lacoste’s findings by pointing to Jacques Derrida’s take on Husserl’s Origin of Geometry, questioning once more the bounds and boundaries of Lacoste’s phenomenology of faith and opening avenues for further research.

‘Openness in Action’ Early Steps in Cosmic Phenomenology

‘Openness in Action’ Early Steps in Cosmic Phenomenology

Interreligious Dialogue: A Challenge for Phenomenology

This article assesses the possible role and scope of phenomenology for the emerging field of interreligious studies while at the same time bringing forth a critical reflection on the practice of phenomenology itself, and more particularly of phenomenology of religion. It contends that phenomenology can be used as a descriptive method in order to understand the structures of experience which are at stake in interreligious dialogue, thus complementing the current approaches in interreligious studies towards this question which are mainly normative. Moreover, it can offer a comprehension of the paradoxical dimension of interreligious dialogue which is marked by a tension between openness and closedness, by drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology of the world, and its dynamic opposition between homeworld and foreign world. This analysis is structured around four argumentative moments: (1) an overview of the main features of the history of the phenomenology of religion and its problematic relationship towards the interreligious space; (2) an assessment of the main advantages of the phenomenological method for the study of religious and especially interreligious studies; (3) a sketch of a possible phenomenology of dialogue, grounding mainly on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology; (4) a sketch of a possible phenomenology of interreligious dialogue, drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology.

Encountering sexuality difference: the experiences of person-centered counselors and psychotherapists who self-describe as heterosexual and have worked with lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer clients

ABSTRACT Lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer people (LGBQ; a sexual minority social group) access counseling and psychotherapy more frequently than heterosexual people, often working with heterosexual therapists (a sexual majority social group). Heterosexual therapists working with LGBQ clients is under-researched which means limited dialogue exists describing a significant yet sensitive area of sexuality difference where therapist and client hold diverging social experiences. To facilitate awareness development in person-centered therapy and beyond, the paper seeks to challenge such limited dialogue, stimulating discussion through considering how four heterosexual person-centered therapists experience working with LGBQ clients. This qualitative research project was designed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis as its methodology to explore the experiences of four heterosexual person-centered therapists who work with LGBQ clients. Findings centered upon four themes: shaping and forming, ways of seeing, witnessing clients and relationships with person-centered theory. The discussion considered the data in dialogue with person-centered theory, explored phenomenological therapy practice, intersectionality, power, and witnessing client experiences of social discrimination, and evaluated the non-pathologizing therapeutic potential that person-centered phenomenological practice holds for working with LGBQ clients. For theory development, the paper calls for further person-centered discourse exploring LGBQ experiencing.

The development of a tool to identify skilled meditators among meditation practitioners - ‘The University of Colombo Intake Interview to identify Skilled Meditators for scientific research (UoC-IISM)’

Introduction: Buddhist-derived meditation is a well-known phenomenological practice that enhances overall wellbeing of individuals. However, broad- and less-rigorous criteria in recruiting suitable meditation practitioners affect the reliability of results obtained through meditation research. Objectives: To develop an instrument to identify skilled meditators among meditation practitioners, in order to use it in scientific research including medical research conducted to understand the physiological, psychological, social, and environmental effects of meditation Methods: Extensive literature reviews, interviews and focus group discussions with experts in a number of related fields were utilized in developing the instrument. Judgmental validation of the generated items was ensured through establishing their face, content and consensual validity. Internal consistency reliability and factor structure of the scale were explored to analyse its psychometric properties. Cut-off marks were determined to develop a scoring system for the instrument. Results: Twenty-five items were categorized under five sections (A, B, C1, C2, D) that addressed six factors: duration of the meditation practice, details of the meditation practice, peripheral awareness, stable attention, and alertness and emotional stability. Three further qualitative items were added under section E. An exploratory factor analysis process resulted in a two-factor structure between the Likert-scale items as theoretically expected. Scores to identify ‘skilled meditators’ were determined as: Section C1>7 (fall-back score; 7-9, ideal score; 10-12), Section C2>14 (fall-back score; 14-16, ideal score; 17-20) and Section D>25 (fall-back score; 25-29, ideal score; 30-35). Conclusions & Recommendations: The overall findings reveal the UoC-IISM to be a valid and reliable tool to be used in identifying skilled meditators, among meditation practitioners, for scientific research in the Sri Lankan context. The instrument explores six factors through its 28 items and the importance of using a combination of these factors is discussed.

On the Struggle for Epokhē and the Crisis of the Savoirs

Abstract Reflecting on the mental ecologies of digital life and the crisis of spirit in the contemporary era, this article principally addresses the question of the possibility of epokhē (ἐποχή), the crisis of formation or self-cultivation (Bildung) and the possibility of a “third world,” which can be opened up by the phenomenological practice of epokhē. This will be undertaken idiosyncratically through a comparison between the thoughts of the British novelist and professor of contemporary thought at Brunel University in London, Will Self, and the late French philosopher Bernard Stiegler (1952–2020). Both thinkers, albeit in different ways and with different emphases—one literary, one more philosophical—address the psychical and traumatogenic consequences of epokhē. We can understand this as a suspension of disbelief in the present as we live through an “epoch without epoch,” a time witnessing the seizure of the symbolic by industrial technologies of the spirit. This is the time of the simulacrum of the real and the circulation of symbolic exchange and death. Both thinkers are interested in reinterpreting the concept of epokhē to consider psychic individuation or the psycho-pathological effects of technology upon the embodied human sensorium. I proffer some original thoughts drawn from the paradigm of critical postmedia philosophy and ecosophy on how to take the best elements from these thinkers to mount a sustained critique of technical life in the traumatized present that is without epoch.

The practice of phenomenology in educational research

In recent years there has been a notable increase in the use of phenomenology as a research method, particularly in educational research. With the rise of phenomenology as a research method, confusion has also arisen concerning what counts as phenomenology, and how best to practice phenomenological research in non-philosophical contexts. Consequently, this article will be concerned with three issues: firstly, to contextualise the debate, I provide a brief overview of three popular and influential approaches to phenomenology as a research method: (1) Giorgi’s descriptive phenomenological method; (2) van Manen’s hermeneutic phenomenology; and, (3) Smith’s interpretative phenomenological analysis; secondly, for the sake of conceptual clarity, I then turn my attention to a critical discussion of these approaches and argue that these approaches tend to converge phenomenology into either a descriptive or interpretative focus that essentially transforms phenomenology into a kind of solipsist subjectivism; and, lastly, to progress the debate forward, I argue that it makes sense to look beyond the qualitative or educational research literature to successful applications of phenomenology in non-philosophical contexts because there are plenty of relevant resources that can offer significant theoretical and methodological support to researchers.

Exploratory Essay Writing

This paper presents a practice—exploratory essay writing—as well as conditions for evidence and arguments that substantiate the categorization of this practice as an aesthetic-phenomenological research practice. Four different strategies have been chosen in order to publish this practice. The first and most relevant was to perform this practice, that is, to write a new exploratory essay to be published in this Special Issue. To read this essay may allow the reader to enter in contact, retroactively, with the practice that generated it and, on this basis, achieve intuitively a sense of how the process of writing might have been developed. The second strategy consists in recording my reading of the new exploratory essay. The change of medium and the consequent aural presence of the essay provides on the one hand another access to the practice and, on the other hand, a bridge to the reflection about this practice as an aesthetic-phenomenological practice. The third strategy presents three different “scores” for writing exploratory essays. These instructions or guidelines disclose step by step the actions that constitute this practice. Eventually, the fourth strategy of publication presents some reflections about exploratory essay writing as an aesthetic practice and as a phenomenological practice as well as about the possibility of conceiving and practicing—or better, of conceiving through practicing—an “aesthetic phenomenology” as complementary to a “philosophical phenomenology.”

What About NOT

This is a piece of experimental multi-perspectival writing in which four different personae adopt different methods and intellectual relationships to writing as a means of research, by using the topics of fiction, counterfactual history and not-being. The narrative line is provided by a novelist who retells Saramago’s The History of the Siege of Lisbon. In Saramago’s novel a wayward proof-reader mischievously adds the word “not” to the historical account, creating a fictional, counterfactual history. This “bringing into being” of a fiction – of what didn’t actually happen – sets in train a series of perspectives or thought experiments by the four personae of the present text on the nature of “not-being”. They deploy methods from fictional writing and phenomenological practice informed by Saramago and Sartre, and phenomenological theory informed by Husserl and Meinong, thereby investigating the topic from four different perspectives. As a result, it is proposed that the legitimacy gap suffered by fiction-as-research may be bridged by so-called Meinongian objects, and the problem of whether such inexistent objects are facts, is less important than deciding whether they are useful. The conclusion is that artistic research methods offer techniques and a space to discuss the agency of not-being, of what-if, and of omission, through the legitimate deployment of fiction and falsehoods; and the benefits of so doing outweigh the existential discomfort that such ideas usually induce in researchers.

Walking, drawing, designing. Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell’s drawing stick and eighteenth-century landscape gardens


 
 
 
 For the German landscape gardener Friedrich Ludwig von Sckell (1750-1823) walking was a method to design landscapes for visitation and inhabitation, in other words, for both walking and staying. Sckell used an idiosyncratic device, the drawing stick, to draw outlines of pathways, plantings, and water bodies directly into the ground at one-to-one scale while walking. This method of “drawing in nature” while in motion was to enable the designer to respond to his imagination, emotions, and the impressions of the site more freely. Although Sckell’s walking designer exhibited the “natural” gait promoted in the late eighteenth century, its contrived nature mirrored the equally contrived nature of the landscape gardens it helped to design. Nevertheless, walking “with decorum” as what in today’s terms could be called a phenomenological bodily practice, was central to Sckell’s naturalistic garden designs that were to foster imagination and emotional response.
 
 
 

DEEP FLOW: an embodied materiality of dance, technology, and bodily experience

In this research article, I argue that Deep Flow is an embodied materiality that may be experienced by exploring performative phenomenologies, entwining two different sets of research practice: phenomenological methodologies and artistic practice. In Deep Flow the practitioner entangles phenomenological methodologies, methods and research practices performatively such as embodied dance practice, the felt senses, drawings, verbal feedback and their analyses in relation to biometric data, from an embodied heart rate monitor. By looking inwardly, the practitioner experiences embodied phenomena and reveals these experiences in artistic practices in relation to the worlding in which they find themselves. These outcomes are considered as being differing materialities, flowing and converging through relational and phenomenological practice, Deep Flow and through this they become embodied by the practitioner, where new forms of embodied materialities emerge. I argue that in my practice, this is an experiential state, Deep Flow, where all human and non-human elements of the dance practice flow and course through the practitioner as an embodied materiality.

Racialized Technics and the Black Virtual in "Random Acts of Flyness"

By defining race according to its “speed of change” and “sliding value,” Beth Coleman’s relational approach powerfully re-conceptualized race as a topological object rather than biologically essential. In a topological model race is a continuum characterized by folds and involutions, which is to say, the experience of racialization is marked by elastic and unpredictable spatial and temporal proximities that may prove to be sustaining or fatal. Reviewing the influence of Coleman’s essay, and the theme “Art and the Technicity of Race” more broadly, I examine how recent iterations of care by Christina Sharpe and Tiffany Lethabo King depart from Coleman’s emphasis upon the disruptive potential of speed by advocating for phenomenological practices of “listening for, feeling for, and noticing,” “Black livingness” amidst the social death of anti-Blackness. Sharpe and King advocate for down-tempo techniques serving an attuned a readied perception, a phenomenology of Black proximity, geared toward feeling out the present carefully. In this paper I register hesitations about aspirations for becoming pure mobility by asking, instead, how a phenomenology of attending engenders “care as force” and how this force is formalized in Black visual art aesthetics.
 In Random Acts of Flyness Terence Nance and a host of collaborators mobilize the minimally determined form of sketch comedy to model acts of attending, listening, and noticing Black livingness across a plurality of perspectives in ever-shifting scenes that blend social realism, musical fantasies, and science fiction. As tonally disparate as individual scenes may be, Nance folds his world together with joints and swerves positing a capacious and intersectional topology of Blackness replete with temporal collapses and shifting feelings of intimacy and alienation. Contrary to Coleman’s claim that agency for racialized subjects is akin to the “precious” assemblage of Joseph Cornell’s boxes, Nance’s capacious Blackness challenges notions of containment and austerity. Random Acts of Flyness presents songs, interviews, and scenes from Black and Brown, cis gendered, queer, and feminist perspectives, to create mutable proximities of Blacknesses through the sketch form.
 Building on Aria Dean’s work, I examine how Random Acts of Flyness aestheticizes Blackness in/as circulation to illustrate how Nance helps us think about technics in terms of collectivity rather than valorizing individual becomings and pure, technicized mobility. Random Acts speculates about how and what Blackness connects; what is transmitted in the circulation of collective being. In the process, it fabulates a capacious, intersectional image of black plurality that exists in excess of a hegemonic Black subject and stands in critical opposition to anti-Blackness. Nance’s aim is not to render “Black collective being” fixed and legible for non- Black audiences but, following Dean, Random Acts of Flyness, “points toward the extra- ontological black (non)subject,” inquiring into the ways in which individual racialized subjects situate themselves in “circulating representations [of Blackness]: a network that includes all the bodies that bear its markers.” Rather than locate emancipatory agency in becoming-mobile, Nance’s project models “Black care” by attending, listening, and noticing Black livingness through a capacious aesthetic.

Experimental Phenomenology as an Approach to the Study of Contemplative Practices.

During history humans have developed a large variety of contemplative practices, in many different areas of life, and as part of many different traditions and contexts. Although some contemplative practices are very old, the research field of Contemplation Studies is young, and there are no agreed-upon definitions of central concepts such as contemplative practices and contemplative experiences. The present paper focuses on contemplative practices, defined as practices that are engaged in for the sake of the contemplative experiences they afford (e.g., the contemplation of nature, or the contemplation of various aspects of being-in-the world). The purpose of the present paper is to discuss the potential of experimental phenomenology to contribute to the development of the research field of Contemplation Studies. Experimental phenomenology is defined as the investigation of phenomenological practices and their effects on experience. Phenomenological practices involve intentional variations of experiencing by means of changes in the direction of attention and the choice of attitude, typically as guided by verbal instructions or self-instructions. It is suggested that contemplative practices represent a subcategory of phenomenological practices. Two different varieties of experimental phenomenology are described and illustrated in the present paper: (1) an informal variety which involves the development of new phenomenological practices by creative variation of procedures and observation of effects; and (2) a more rigorously scientific variety, which involves the systematic variation of phenomenological practices in accordance with experimental designs to study their experiential effects. It is suggested that the development of contemplative practices during the ages is the result of an informal experimenting of the first kind; this variety of experimental phenomenology can also be used to develop personalized health interventions in a clinical setting. As to the more rigorously scientific experimental phenomenology, it is possible that it may lead not only to an improved understanding of general principles underlying contemplative practices, but also to a more systematic development of new contemplative practices. The experimental-phenomenological approach to contemplative practices is illustrated by various examples involving mindfulness, gratitude, receiving and giving.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE ART OF LAND ART

Land art is an artistic activity, the object of which is a real fragment of the natural environment, which is interpreted by the artist not so much as the location of the work, but as the context in which his idea is concentrated. The landscape is understood as a reflection not only of ecology, but also of philosophy, sociology, history, anthropology, mythology, symbolism, and cultural history. Philosophical reflections on time and space, the importance of contexts, the understanding of fluidity, the temporality of any human intervention in nature were the original sources of many land art concepts. The purpose of the article is an attempt to determine how the philosophical practices that nourished the creativity of land art artists influenced the essence of this artistic direction. Using the method of analysis of literary sources and examples of land art, the connection that can be seen between the considerations of R. Smithson, an American artist, one of the first and leading practitioners and theorists of land art, whose texts became programmatic for many successors, and Martin Heidegger, one of the more famous philosophers of the 20th century, who considered the essence of art in the concepts of existence and truth. Smithson turned to phenomenological practices from the 1960s until the end of his life. Acquaintance with the artist’s philosophical thoughts along the lines of phenomenology of perception, a unique attitude to work with the land and forms of art representation, as well as an attempt to determine the importance of contexts for art – provides an opportunity to understand his works in a new way. Land art as an art is, first of all, work with an idea, a symbol. Philosophical background gives a special elitist taste to such works, it seems that their authors know something beyond the average vision of the world. And this approach, in our opinion, sharply separates land art from design practices, on which it undoubtedly has a great influence.

Deconstruction as Repair

Deconstruction as Repair: An ecological perspective on the Six Viewpoints is a co-authored article by Josh Armstrong and Meryl Murman. The writing is carried by the personal and subjective experiences of the authors aiming to understand how postmodern deconstruction is an act of ecological repair. The experiences and thoughts that arise are informed by ecological and postmodern philosophy, by Mary Overlie’s Six Viewpoints — both as phenomenological and philosophical theory and practice — and culminate in reflections on practice-led research through the facilitation of becoming-Botanical somatic movement laboratories. Drawing on the personal observations and reflections from regular participants in weekly somatic movement laboratories held in New Orleans from the Summer of 2018 through the Autumn of 2019, including a residential retreat in rural Mississippi, this article focuses on the restorative qualities which emerge as common themes. According to Overlie, the proper deconstruction of the Six Viewpoints should not be confused with ‘mistaken postmodernism’ and the resulting deconstruction that appears as collage, pastiche or Kitsch Art. Overlie’s deconstruction emphasizes the need for a sharp tool and an observant mind to disassemble the materials of performance with a view to better understand them and ultimately to free them from the hierarchical structures that act upon them. This is not a deconstruction of demolition or damage, but of discovering that which was once hidden or unknown — a process of reification that Overlie champions as the basis for both art and science. Through the becoming-Botanical movement laboratories, we apply this performance-based deconstruction in contexts outside of theatre and performance and find that the Six Viewpoints as phenomenological and somaesthetic training can enable participants to mend psychic and emotional relationships with more-than-human life and make reparations and preparations for the inevitable end of the world.

Experimental Phenomenology as Personalized Health Intervention: A Case Illustration

Experimental phenomenology is the investigation of phenomenological practices and their effects. To engage in a phenomenological practice means to focus attention on aspects of one’s experiences (e.g., sense impressions or body sensations) while adopting a specific kind of attitude (e.g., an explorative attitude) according to some set of instructions. The basic assumption is that the regulation of attention and attitudes involved in such practices may have effects on people’s health and quality of life. The present paper describes the basic principles of experimental phenomenology as an approach to personalized health interventions and illustrates these principles with a case, where a mindful embodiment practice was constructed for an individual suffering from insomnia due to early morning awakenings. The results are discussed in terms of the importance of personalization, the ambition to formulate general conclusions about the effects of phenomenological practices, and the need for measurements not only before and after treatment but also during the treatment process.

Beyond the Phenomenology of the Inconspicuous

How does spirit appear? In fact, it does not appear, and for this reason, we could refer to it, following Heidegger, as “inconspicuous” (unscheinbar). The Heideggerian path investigates this inconspicuous starting from the Husserlian method, and yet, this is not the only Phenomenology of the “Inconspicuous” Spirit: Hegel had already thematized it in 1807. It is thus possible to identify at least two Phenomenologies of the “Inconspicuous” spirit. These two phenomenologies, however, do not simply put forth distinct phenomenological methods, nor do they merely propose differing modes of spirit’s manifestation. In each of these phenomenologies, rather, what we call “spirit” manifests different traits: in one instance, it appears as absolute knowing, and, in the other, it manifests “from itself” as “phenomenon”. Yet how, exactly, does spirit manifest “starting from itself as phenomenon”? Certainly not in the mode of entities, but rather in the modality that historical phenomenology, which also includes Edmund Husserl’s work, has grasped. A question remains, however: is the inconspicuous coextensive with “spirit”? Certainly, spirit is inconspicuous, but it is not only spirit that is such. A certain phenomenological practice understood this well, a practice that several French authors have pushed. Jean-Luc Marion, Michel Henry, and Jean-Louis Chrétien have all contributed, in a certain way, to the phenomenology of the inconspicuous. However, do these authors carry out a phenomenology of inconspicuous spirit? Perhaps what French phenomenology gives us today, after an itinerary that has discovered several senses of the inconspicuous, is precisely the return to spirit that is missing in, and was missed by, this tradition.

The emancipation of mindfulness from its religious context

The present paper argues that if the so-called mindfulness movement is to reach its full potential it needs to emancipate from its religious context and ally itself fully with psychological science. The argument that mindfulness meditation needs a religious context for ethical reasons is untenable. Although mindfulness skills may well be used for un-ethical purposes, this applies equally to both religious (e.g., Buddhist) and secular contexts, and is best handled by an open-minded philosophical-ethical discussion. One problem with present mindfulness-based treatments and mindfulness research is that they are still partly enmeshed with Buddhist conceptualizations of the world, which are thought to represent “seeing things as they are”. If the full potential of mindfulness meditation is to be understood, research methods are needed which focus on the phenomenological practices involved in terms of psychological processes such as the regulation of attention and attitudes.