I am glad to have re-discovered phenomenology. It appears that my theoretical and intellectual stance was informed more by phenomenology than I had initially realized. Though, given the implicit influence of phenomenology on prevailing French theorists such as Foucault and Bourdieu, it is unsurprising that I could fall in line with phenomenology without it being identified by name. (I did, however, have a course in phenomenology and existentialism as an undergraduate, so that is where I was initially influenced by the perspective, and I have implicitly recognized it as part of my theoretical and intellectual stance.)
In particular, I now understand that my concern with sensations, feelings, experience, embodiment, affect and emotion can be rooted in phenomenology as a foundation, starting point, and overarching umbrella for these concerns.
I can also now see how my interest in micro-logical phenomenological experiences has made it difficult for me to connect my work to “larger” theoretical concerns. For me this phenomenological plane has nearly comprised the entirety of the grounds for my theoretical concerns, and it has been satisfying simply to consider subjectivity in terms of the experiences that make up a particular subject position in an attempt to capture “what it feels like” to occupy and live through that position.
This is partially what has motivated my concern with developments in communications technology, where individuals’ lived experiences change into something new as these technologies become attached to them as subjects and come to bear on their experience of the world. A simple example of this can be found in the anxiety many individuals experience when they forget their cell phone at home and feel as if they are missing a piece of themself. Another example that is harder to place and substantiate is the ubiquitous appearance of search capabilities, captured best by Google, and the way it generates frustrations with existing technologies, such as printed books, because they do not offer the same search functionality. Yet more difficult to place is the effect, if any, that these search capabilities and other information management technologies have on the relations we have with others. For example, just as we hunt through pages of search results and refine our search terms only to settle on one of the results, while believing that there is still a better result out there, does this same logic come to bear on contemporary romantic endeavors, where the right person can be found if only we search harder and better without ever being satisfied with what we find because there must be something better out there?
I do understand now, however, that this phenomenological plane alone is not enough in itself to sustain a project, and so, one of my goals is to figure out how to bridge my phenomenological concerns into a “broader” project. This will be assisted by identifying examples where this has already been achieved so I can draw upon them as a model for my own work.
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