Phenomenology & Practice (Journal)
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Golden Paper, a Chain and a Bag: A Phenomenology of Queer Things in a Special Needs Education Unit
No full textChildren naturally play with things in both expected and unexpected ways. A stick, a spoon, or a chain of pearls may each seem to contain a goldmine of possibilities for the individual child. Every child encounters an object according to their own predilections and abilities. Some children, due to severe and multiple disabilities, are restricted in their possibilities to approach certain things. In this paper, we explore the existential meaning of “queer things” as a way to understand how two children with disabilities reach out to objects in an educational space, where they relate to themselves, to things, as well as to others
The Vanity Drawer
No full textThe vanity is often considered a piece of traditional furniture for female beautification. Although it has changed form over time, some variant of the vanity drawer continues to exist in many men’s and women’s households. This article considers the unique roles that vanity drawers—in their various shapes and forms—can play in our daily life and the different meanings it can hold
The Vitality of Humanimality: From the Perspective of Life Phenomenology
No full textWhile interactions with other animate beings seem mostly to serve our own human interests, there are, at times, fugitive glimpses, passing contacts, momentary motions, and fleeting feelings of vital connection with other life forms. Life phenomenology attempts to realize these relational, interactive and intercorporeal possibilities. It challenges the language game of presuming the muteness and bruteness of non-human creatures and, at best, of speaking for them. It critiques the capture of non-human species within the inhibiting ring of human functions and forms to reveal feelings and flows of interspecies commonality. It brings to expression the experiences of being moved to act and speak with others who do not share the human tongue. In part a critique of the logocentric, anthropocentric phenomenologies of intentionality, life phenomenology is more positively a means of coming to terms with the life-affirming kinetic, kinesthetic and affective dynamics of interspecies relationality. I take up the interrogation of this phenomenality, this humanimality, with the assistance of phenomenological scholarship that lends fuller credence to the experiences we have of moving in concert with other animate beings. In doing so, I aim to show the important insights that life phenomenology offers us in fostering not only greater appreciation of, responsivenss to and connection with other animals, but also in indicating the qualitative dynamics of relating with greater animate consciousness to one anotherof our own animal kind
When I Dance My Walk: A Phenomenological Analysis of Habitual Movement in Dance Practices
No full textIn this article, I describe the experience of dancing-a-walk. My specific focus is on the shift that I perceive in my body when I dance-a-walk rather than functionally walking. Following a firstperson perspective, I demonstrate how my experience of practicing dancing-a-walk interrogates the habit of walking and makes it come alive again as an expression of the body. First, I show how the practice of dancing-a-walk challenges the dichotomy between abstract and concrete movement proposed by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in the Phenomenology of Perception. Indeed, dancing-a-walk is an example of a concrete and yet already abstract movement. Then, I turn to concepts such as habits and body memory. By identifying how the perception of my body changes when I dance everyday movements (i.e., walking) versus when I execute such movements functionally, I aim to develop a new perspective on and vocabulary for a phenomenological definition of concrete/abstract movements within the context of dance
The Reader\u27s Sticky Note
No full textThe sticky note is a ubiquitous yet taken-for-granted item of modern life. Its sticky invitation to note-making has made it a compelling and wholly fragmentary organizational tool. Examining this simple technology in the reader’s lifeworld, this article aims to glean insight into the phenomena of memory, noting, reading, and the ongoing yet ineffable moments of meaning-making in our everyday life
The Spoon
No full textA spoon is an ordinary and easily recognizable thing. As a utensil for eating and feeding, a tool for cooking and serving, or perhaps a collection of memories, this article reflects on a spoons’ place in our lives. The shape of a spoon and other significances are considered
The Bathtub
No full textWhat is the lived experience of bathing in someone else’s tub? Why would this experience be dissimilar to bathing in your own tub? This essay examines the nuances of bathing elsewhere, focusing on intimacy, place, ritual, and time
Editorial: Life Phenomenology--Movement, Affect and Language
No full textThe “life phenomenology” theme of the 35th International Human Science Research Conference challenged participants to consider pressing questions of life and of living with others of our own and other-than-human kinds. The theme was addressed by keynote speakers Maxine Sheets-Johnstone, Ralph Acampora and David Abram who invoked a motile, affective and linguistic awareness of how we might dwell actively and ethically amongst human communities and with the many life forms we encounter in the wider, wilder world we have in common. Conference participants were provoked to consider the following questions: “How might phenomenology have us recognize a primacy of movement and bring us in touch with the motions and gestures of the multiple lifeworlds of daily living? What worlds from ecology to technology privilege certain animations? What are the affects and effects of an enhanced phenomenological sensitivity? What senses, feelings, emotions and moods of self-affirmation and responsiveness to others sustain us in our daily lives? And to what extent might the descriptive, invocative, provocative language of phenomenology infuse the human sciences and engender a language for speaking directly of life?
The Piano
No full textA pianist experiences the thingness of the piano as an extension of the body. Although contact occurs only through the player’s extremities, the piano invites the use of the whole body to transmit emotion, transport the player into the body and mind of a composer, and transform the pianist’s ability to hear