One of the many tasks involved in writing a dissertation or a research article is being able to justify the choice of one methodology over others. Just as critical to the feasibility of a st

1

Introduction Phenomenology’s Methodological Invitation

Kalpana Ram and Christopher Houston

What is phenomenology? And why should anthropologists, as well as students of history, psychology, education, or political economy be interested in it? Within philosophy, phenomenology is as diverse as its practitioners. Indeed, Moran (2000: 3) in an introduction to philosophical traditions of phenomenology finds it impor- tant to warn readers not to overstate the degree to which phenomenology “coheres into an agreed method, or accepts one theoretical outlook, or one set of philo- sophical theses about consciousness, knowledge, and the world.” Some of this di- versity continues to be a feature of anthropological uses of phenomenology, as we show here. Yet we also argue for a heuristic narrowing of the range of its mean- ings. We do so in order to widen its potential applicability, making it more in- structive to anthropology as well as to aligned disciplines. What might appear to be a paradox—restricting meaning in order to expand its use—is in fact in keep- ing with phenomenology’s own teachings, and we argue for this in some detail in this introduction. For preliminary purposes, we offer a serviceable definition of phenomenology: phenomenology is an investigation of how humans perceive, experience, and comprehend the sociable, materially assembled world that they inherit at infancy and in which they dwell.

Framed in this way, phenomenology in anthropology is a theory of percep- tion and experience that pertains to every man, woman, and child in every so- ciety. As such, it is relevant not just to locals in the fieldwork sites that anthropolo- gists step into and out of, but also to anthropologists and philosophers in their own regional lives, surrounded like everyone everywhere by significant others, human and non- human. Phenomenology therefore has a decidedly universalis- tic dimension. But it is also determinedly particularistic. The phenomenology we privilege sets out to show how experience and perception are constituted through social and practical engagements. There is a temporal, cumulative dimension to phenomenological descriptions of people’s activities and concerns, which comes through most profoundly in phenomenology’s subtle vocabulary of the orienta- tions that inhabit our bodies and guide people’s actions and perspectives.

Such a developmental account is necessarily also particular to both time and place. In this combination of the universal and the particular, phenomenology

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

2 | Phenomenology in Anthropology

contains elements of anthropology’s origi nal charter that sought to maintain a sense of human generalities while pursuing empirical investigation of the par- ticular and the concrete. We suggest that phenomenology can renew this older project, infusing it with freshness, while avoiding many of the pitfalls that have been located in overlapping and diverse critiques of universalism as a cloak for particular and powerful subject positions—European, imperialist, masculinist, white, and so on—there being no necessary limit to such forms of positionality. Instead, the universalism of phenomenology seeks to locate itself at ever more basic levels, actively aiming to expose and shed presuppositions. Its method is in fact predicated on this quest to reveal and discard whatever is revealed to be an unwarranted presupposition smuggled into one’s work.

The account we provide in this introduction tries to elucidate and clarify a version of phenomenology that makes it important not simply to contemporary anthropology with its breadth of concerns, but to other disciplines as well. Many definitions of phenomenology locate its focus at the level of in di vidual experience. But perception and experience contains many dimensions—sensorial, corporeal, cultivated, interactional, distributed, collective, po liti cal, ethical, and individual. Such dimensions immediately invoke processes of education, socialization, and po liti cal power. As people’s situations, concerns, or orientations alter, oft en ma- terialized in a transformation in embodied experience or in educated capacities, so are their perceptions modified. The phenomenology we seek to foreground in- vites considerations of politics and political economy, macro- as well as micro- processes. In the many corners of the world now where war, compulsory migra- tion, or violence have wrought perceptual and experiential modifications upon people, phenomenological anthropology will be necessarily involved in describing the passive apprehension of that which is involuntary or even unspeakable, even as it discerns and describes the active absorption of traumatic experience amidst the suffering.

Narrowing the Range of Meanings and Expanding the Range of Applicability Our volume vindicates and extends the sense of burgeoning interest in phenome- nology among anthropologists, attested to in several wide- ranging overviews— most recently by Desjarlais and Throop (2011) in the Annual Review of Anthro- pology, and earlier, by Michael Jackson in his extensive introduction to Things as They Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology (1996). We build on the clarity of these excellent essays, which describe the ways in which phenome- nology and anthropology have already intersected over a period of time. In this longer history of exchange and critique a number of recurrent themes have already emerged. Reviewers have noted a clustering of phenomenological anthropology in certain areas such as sensory perception, illness and healing, bodily- ness, inter-

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Introduction | 3

subjectivity and sociality, and senses of place (Desjarlais and Throop 2011), with a particularly heavy concentration in the areas of medical anthropology and the anthropology of religion (Knibbe and Versteeg 2008). Katz and Csordas (2003) found a typicality of approach as well, with a prominent stream of work seek- ing to illuminate “native groundings” for subjects’ experiences, “enhancing re- spect for local cultures by uncovering reasons that outsiders had not appreciated” (2003: 275). Such interpretations may also show a preference for an ethnographic accounting of “alien cultural life-world[s]” (Mimica 2010: 204), and in particular of non- urban societies. Sometimes these societies have also been presented as es- sentially stateless (despite their partial incorporation within new nation-states), or at least as relatively self- instituting in relation to the projects of nation states and the global capitalist economy.

This volume makes a more radical claim for phenomenology in anthropology. It seeks to show that any anthropologist who engages with the method in a sus- tained manner over time will find it illuminates aspects of their own work. The essays demonstrate our claim empirically, showcasing the sheer breadth and va- riety of social activities and events whose study is enhanced by phenomenology. While some of the characteristic areas of concentration certainly recur in this vol- ume as well, the contributions extend much further, ranging from martial arts, sports, dance, and music to political discourses and history. A sustained closing segment of the volume explores how phenomenology might both contribute to and benefit from long-standing anthropological debates and practical attempts to reshape the poetics of ethnography, and thus to forge more adequate means of representation in bringing unfamiliar and marginalized modes of perception into language, image, and sound.

Yet—perhaps paradoxically—this expansion of subject matter, potentially one that promises to address the entire breadth of concerns of contemporary anthro- pology, has been won in this volume by what we have already described as narrow- ing down the range of meanings attached to the term phenomenology. It is char- acteristic in introductions to indicate and implicitly to embrace the sheer variety and range of philosophical versions that fall under the label of phenomenology. The gesture may seem ecumenical, but it presupposes an abstract, detached view toward phenomenology itself. A lesson we may well apply here, taken from phe- nomenologists such as Heidegger, is that such a detached perspective is not nec- essarily the most useful one, because it is also not the most characteristic attitude taken in human endeavors. The detachment that is upheld as a goal and starting point by dominant scholarly traditions is, he suggests, a distortion of our far more ordinary purposive attitudes to the world in which we are oriented by the tasks and projects we seek to accomplish. In that more characteristic mode, he argues, we typically select and favor certain aspects of the world around us over others (Heidegger 1962).

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

4 | Phenomenology in Anthropology

In the case at hand, our purposive orientations are given by the tasks of an- thropology. We use these to foreground specific features of phenomenology, which means selecting certain interpretations of phenomenology at the expense of oth- ers. These different interpretations sometimes occur even in the same text, mak- ing for a marked instability of meanings that cluster around a term central to phe- nomenology and many would argue to anthropology itself: experience. We use this introduction to argue that the most useful version of phenomenology for an- thropologists is one that recognizes the limits to a knowing consciousness. Expe- rience is not simply what is illuminated by the light of the mind or by cognitive attention. It includes also the indistinctness at the edge of audibility, the shadows that subtend that which appears in the clarity of attentive focus.

The subtitle of this volume—A Sense of Perspective—refers to this mixture of vision and opacity, of audition and indistinction as both ever- present within human experience and systematically interrelated in forming our sense of per- spective. Our perspective encompasses all the senses as they inform one another, even as they remain distinct modalities of perception. But it is equally important to emphasize that the version of phenomenological anthropology we elucidate here does not see opacity and indistinctness only as limitations. They also create a field of perception and the possibility of sensing and comprehending the world, not as a chaotic jumble or as the uniformly arrayed objective universe of scien- tific imagination, but as something that can be understood through our human endeavors and purposes.

We hope to show that this more stringently defined version of experience we have picked out from among many unstable and inherently contradictory inter- pretations accrues a further advantage. It allows us to address one central concern that anthropologists express when asked to consider utilizing phenomenology: how does concentrating on experience allow us to account for the many forms of mediation of experience and perception itself? This too is part of the mean- ing we hope to signal with our subtitle. Such mediations, many of which play a salient role in the anthropological analyses collected in this volume, encompass long histories of power relations that connect as well as divide people. Mediations thus include traditions of representation; old and new discursive formations that shape and reshape what we take to be experience; rules, regulations, and prac- tices of state institutions and corporate entities; class, gender, and property re- gimes; dominant ideologies; language; assemblages of the built environment; and new technologies. Just as significantly, mediation includes that dimension of so- cial variability that has been central to the anthropological endeavor, namely the diversity of cultures—between but also, crucially, within social formations.

Yet the capacity to visualize an enlarged perspective must always bring in its train—for phenomenology—a certain new version of selectivity. We hope to show that this more stringently defined version of experience we have picked out from

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Introduction | 5

among many unstable and inherently contradictory interpretations accrues ad- vantages. We begin therefore by clarifying the definition of experience that is im- plied in our preferred version of phenomenology, before moving on to show how this can help us readdress the question of mediation.

Phenomenological Redefinitions of “Experience”: Marking the Limits of Consciousness A number of the selections we wish to make converge on the crucial term “expe- rience” as well as the term “consciousness,” both of which are regularly invoked in definitions of phenomenology.

Consider the following quotations:

Phenomenology is “an investigation into the structures of experience which pre- cede connected expression in language.” (Ricoeur, cited in Jackson 1996: 2)

Phenomenology is the scientific study of experience. It is an attempt to de- scribe human consciousness in its lived immediacy, before it is subject to theo- retical elaboration or conceptual systematisation. (Jackson 1996: 2)

Phenomenology is an analytical approach, more a method of inquiry, really, than a theory, that works to understand and describe in words phenomena as they appear to the consciousness of certain people. (Desjarlais 1996: 13)

Phenomenology is the description of “the experiences of the conscious self . . . in particular fields of experience.” (Macquarie 1988: 211)

The term “experience” enjoys an old and obdurate history in the traditions of West ern philosophy, cohering specifically around the conscious thoughts, inten- tions, desires, projects, and plans of the human individual. Its dominance may be gauged by the extent to which such terms occur to many of us as the most spon- taneous interpretation that suggests itself when the term is mentioned. Unless ex- plicitly reframed (and the redefinition kept alive by application to fresh contexts as they arise), statements that proclaim the immediacy of lived experience as their methodological measure automatically suggest to readers a subject whose experi- ence is transparent to consciousness. Such a reading of phenomenology has been further encouraged by the circulation of influential critiques such as that of Bour- dieu’s, which describes the phenomenological description of experience as one that simply “excludes the question of the conditions of its own possibility” (1977: 3). Bourdieu persistently reads phenomenology as a species of “subjectivism,” that is to say, as an epistemology that begins with the in di vidual human subject as meth- odological starting point. Sartre fig ures in his account of phenomenology, but not his contemporary Merleau- Ponty, who dedicated his phenomenology to creating a break with “subjectivism” as well as with what Bourdieu describes as “objectiv- ism.” It is also this version of phenomenology that is implicit in the widespread

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

6 | Phenomenology in Anthropology

apprehension within anthropology, captured in Desjarlais and Throop’s over- view, that “phenomenological approaches in anthropology ignore the political and socioeconomic determinants of life and people’s living conditions” (2011: 95).

Such a reading and its ensuing apprehensions have been further encouraged by the specific conjunctural circumstances in which many anthropologists turned to phenomenology: “Starting in the mid-1980s, several anthropologists . . . began to advocate for ‘an anthropology of experience,’ finding that anthropology had come to focus unduly on questions of meaning, discourse, structural relations, and po liti cal economy, to the neglect of the everyday experiences, contingencies, and dilemmas that weigh so heavily on people’s lives” (Desjarlais and Throop 2011: 92–93).

We take here Jackson’s rich introduction to Things as They Are as an exem- plary manifestation and crystallization of this conjuncture: a turn to phenome- nology, as recommended by those “alarmed at the alienating power of their pro- fessional discourse” (Jackson 1996: 8). Later in this volume Houston explores the wider dimensions of the crisis as well as Jackson’s creative responses to it, as they take shape in the diverse corpus of his work. Here we will concentrate instead on just one aspect of that introduction: namely, an ambiguity in the conceptualiza- tion of “experience.” Some of this indecisiveness stems from Jackson’s alarm not only at classical anthropology’s abstractions, but at key conceptual tenets of post- structuralism: Bourdieu’s “habitus” and Foucault’s discursive formations and prac- tices, both of which give primacy to what he describes as “impersonal forces of his- tory, language and upbringing” (1996: 22). Against this onslaught, he defends the place of “the subject” as the central site where “life is lived, meanings are made, will is exercised, reflection takes place, consciousness finds expression, determi- nations take effect, and habits are formed or broken” (1996: 22).

We agree that many a practitioner of Foucault and Derrida has reduced expe- rience to little more than an essentializing centerpiece of Western metaphysics. A fundamental incoherence results if such positions are consistently taken as theo- retical orthodoxy by the social sciences and humanities. This is especially the case for anthropology, given its own continued methodological orientation toward long-term involvement with the lives of people as the way to understand wider social forces. However, in posing the matter as a choice between post- structuralist theorists and experience, the argument suggests we have to choose between a phe- nomenology of experience and accounts of power and other forms of determina- tion. Such a choice is rendered unnecessary if we recognize, instead, the ways in which phenomenology contains within itself many of the “decentering” moves we associate with post-structuralism, but without giving up on “experience.” In- deed, it is this very quality that is particularly attractive about phenomenology, not only for illuminating various theoretical conundrums, but for a more satis- factory analy sis of power and politics as well (see Ram 2013).

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Introduction | 7

Such advantages may not be equally true of all phenomenology, which is why in the main contributors to this volume concentrate on particular phenomenolo- gists. While Sartre and Charles Peirce are important phenomenological points of reference for two contributors in particular (Van Heekeren and Bedford, re- spectively), Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau- Ponty are central to the volume. It is no coincidence that these philosophers also form an integral part of the gene- alogy of theoretical developments that have included Marxism, psychoanaly sis, structuralism, and post-structuralism. Together they aimed to deconstruct and decenter the fig ure of the subject inherited from a tradition they came to retro- spectively characterize as so many “philosophies of consciousness.” One of our opening papers in this volume, by Csordas, explores the work of Foucault, Bour- dieu, and Merleau-Ponty in terms of permutations that occur in the relations be- tween three key terms—body, world, and subjectivity. Bourdieu may well have been discomfited by being thus brought into such an intimate relationship with a phenomenologist, particularly Heidegger, whose politics were anathema to him (see Bourdieu 1991). But our point here is a Bourdieuian one. Without a com- mon and shared theoretical “habitus”—successively established by Husserl, Hei- degger, and Merleau-Ponty—one that had already simultaneously redefined and brought all three key terms into an integral relationship, it would not be possible for Csordas to express the work of Foucault and Bourdieu as variations or modu- lations of the same shared set of terms. Nor would he be able to successfully com- pare them as complementary methodologies.

A definitive break with earlier traditions is already firmly outlined in the opening of Heidegger’s opus Being and Time (1962), which begins with a sustained challenge to all epistemological traditions that rely on starting with a subject who is defined primarily in terms of an isolated consciousness. He points out the irony that defines this history: despite the seeming certainty of such a self- evident ver- sion of experience, this is a tradition racked with doubt as to the foundations of knowledge. If all that one has sure access to is one’s own thoughts, perceptions, and consciousness, then what measure remains for assessing their truth and ve- racity? What necessary correspondence is there between one’s consciousness and the world outside it? And how can this experiencing subject have access to the experiences of others? Heidegger does not seek to answer these questions within the received epistemological framework. Nor does he seek to provide a better ac- count of empathy, traditionally privileged in anthropological accounts of how we come to know worlds other than our own. Instead, he sets out to show that the very premises of such epistemic questions are based on a faulty ontology of the human subject and proceeds to no less a task than providing a fresh one. The vol- ume’s first two chapters (by Ram and Csordas) set out some of the basic features of the reframed ontology of human existence as it emerges from the reworking provided by Heidegger and Merleau- Ponty. Taking the concept of intentionality

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

8 | Phenomenology in Anthropology

from Husserl, who uses it to indicate a fundamentally outward- directed orien- tation of human existence, Heidegger gives it an active practice-based as well as existential set of orientations. In Merleau- Ponty, this active orientation of human existence is further made flesh, finding its basis in the sentient motility of the hu- man body.

We are not suggesting that many of these key concepts with which these par- ticular philosophers redefine the classical “subject” of philosophy—subjectivity as intersubjectivity, embodiment, sociality—have not been well represented in the literature on phenomenological anthropology. Jackson’s introduction to Things as They Are, which we are examining for its exposition on “experience,” is eloquent on each one of these themes. But what remains unclarified in the overall schema of his introduction, as in many other presentations, is the implication of these phenomenological concepts for the “subject” who exercises will, reflects, makes meanings, and expresses consciousness. Jackson’s defense of this subject renews the instabilities of meaning surrounding what we mean by “experience.”

What we are suggesting, then, is that certain defining features of this “sub- ject” do have to be given up in order to take in the full import of phenomenology. They need not be absolute choices. We can retain—as we obviously must—the ex- ercise of choice, will, reflection, and conscious expression as attributes of subjec- tivity. But we need to give up the primacy afforded to these domains in the defi- nition of experience. Concepts such as intersubjectivity and embodiment are not simply extensions or enrichments of older understandings of experience. They also, in very important senses, mark the limits of consciousness itself.

Marking these limits also brings with it certain theoretical gains. We can return afresh to the question of mediation and determination. For as long as we are asked to concentrate on experience, and experience continues to be the do- main of conscious understanding, will, choice, and reflection, then anthropolo- gists will necessarily continue to be perplexed as to how to “bring into the ac- count,” as if from some foreign land, crucial considerations such as “the po liti cal and socioeconomic determinants of life and people’s living conditions.” By con- trast, the version of “experience” that emerges from these philosophers already contains within it the framework needed for an integrated understanding of all these elements.

One of the sources for ready misunderstanding stems from the drama of the opposition between abstract intellectualizing schema and experience, a drama staged by phenomenology itself. The spectacular nature of this opposition easily captures the attention of observers, and obscures the quieter but equally signifi- cant drama that is unfolding in the phenomenological redefinition of experi- ence itself. The account that emerges from Heidegger and Merleau- Ponty is one in which pre-intellectualized experience is itself subject to a wide range of influ-

Ram, K., & Houston, C. (Eds.). (2015). Phenomenology in anthropology : A sense of perspective. Indiana University Press. Created from ncent-ebooks on 2023-01-11 16:35:57.

C op

yr ig

ht ©

2 01

5. In

di an

a U

ni ve

rs ity

P re

ss . A

ll rig

ht s

re se

rv ed

.

Introduction | 9

ences, determinations, and mediations. What is oft en described as “immediate” experience in fact turns out to be a mediated one, with a secure place carved out precisely for the impersonal elements that are integral to the personal. The total field of what constitutes experience is thus made wider than before. But that field no longer coincides with what is conscious.

We offer as a concrete example the model of perception developed by Merleau- Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception (POP). In fact, perception is not simply an example of experience for Merleau-Ponty but the very si

Collepals.com Plagiarism Free Papers

Are you looking for custom essay writing service or even dissertation writing services? Just request for our write my paper service, and we'll match you with the best essay writer in your subject! With an exceptional team of professional academic experts in a wide range of subjects, we can guarantee you an unrivaled quality of custom-written papers.

Get ZERO PLAGIARISM, HUMAN WRITTEN ESSAYS

Why Hire Collepals.com writers to do your paper?

Quality- We are experienced and have access to ample research materials.

We write plagiarism Free Content

Confidential- We never share or sell your personal information to third parties.

Support-Chat with us today! We are always waiting to answer all your questions.