Phenomenological Critique

Uncategorized

I have started a practice of phenomenological cultural critique.  What does that mean? Phenomenology is the study of direct experience. So when I encounter a cultural object I ask what is my direct experience of these objects that I detect from my senses.>  What are the colors, the sounds, the tastes, the feels?

There is something refreshing about this sort of approach since it releases us from the seemingly infinite tangle of cultural references or even value judgements. I also appreciate the grounding in sensation as a practice in itself.

Adam Berg’s New Centre lectures have rekindled my interest in phenomenology, and also the intersection between phenomenology and psychology or consciousness. Phenomenology, as Husserl originally conceived of it, is about the frameworks of human thought not the content of human thought.

A phenomenological psychology would be using direct experience to define the field of psychology, rather than making using phenomenology to describe a particular experience within psychology.  Although, it is this latter practice that I am interested in exploring with my phenomenological critiques, and which many people have used in their own explorations of phenomenology.

Leave a Reply