5.2 Being-in-the-world back to the things themselves
5.2.1 Existence and its (given and primary) preoccupation
All phenomenology is preoccupied with the experience of what it terms a phenomenon (see Schutz, 1967; Husserl, 1970; Heidegger, 1988; Cohen and Omery, 1994; Dowling, 2007). The experience of this phenomenon is documented and interpreted for improved understanding as the experience of a ‘thing’ referred to as a ‘lifeworld’ (see Buttimer, 1976; Ley, 1979; Wagner, 1983; Benner, 1994; Hubbard, 1996; Persson, 2007). In rather simple terms, a lifeworld is an existence/being within a particular and daily (static) progression/spectrum of events that come about as a result of the learnt and practiced manoeuvres of the individual within that lifeworld.
In other words, the lifeworld is a world constructed and experienced through lifestyle. For instance, a street vendor lives in a world of their own construction in the same manner a student at a university lives their life as a student. The only difference is that the worlds are constructed differently qualitatively and channel somewhat different qualities of experience.
Phenomenology proceeds to argue about existence and how it is constructed in experience. A mainstay argument of phenomenologists is that of the experiential reality of what is termed intentionality. Verbeek (2008:387) argues, in the manner that many phenomenologists argue, that:
Rather than separating humans and world, the concept of intentionality makes visible the inextricable connections between them. Because of the intentional structure of human experience, human beings can never be understood in isolation from the reality in which they live. Humans are always directed toward reality.
They cannot simply “think,” but they always think something; they cannot simply
“see,” but they always see something; they cannot simply “feel” but always feel
94 | P a g e something. As experiencing beings, humans cannot but be directed at the entities which constitute their world.
The above is to say that people in their existence – which is primarily spatial in character – are always looking at something (see Miller, 1984; Tye, 1997; Siewert, 1998; Horgan and Tienson, 2002; Chalmers, 2004). This looking is non-negotiable; it is, however, qualitatively different for people who are blind. For example, the street vendor is always looking in real-time at something that makes up their preoccupation – whatever the preoccupation is, in the same manner that I am currently seeing (to use Cerbone’s (2006) example), amongst other things, my pen and the marks (smudged as they are) that it makes on the page as I write this. In other words, to be alive is to be looking at something that your existence for that moment has allowed you to be conscious of.
The above-mentioned examples are only the beginning for phenomenology. Just as a person is always conscious of some ‘thing’ that is part of their experience through existence they can engage in an exercise to unpack the experience down to its essentials. This exercise is referred to as the adoption of a phenomenological attitude (see Bannan, 1967; Giorgi, 1983; Jardine, 1990; Adams, 1995; Moran, 2001; Abbott, 2004; Cerbone, 2006). The phenomenological attitude is that which leads to considered reflection upon the experience of the lifeworld. For example, the street vendor may notice that so-called ‘street kids’ often flock close to their stand and beg for money. The street vendor, regardless of their feelings towards this occurrence close to their stand, may accept the occurrence as a spatial reality that is unavoidable. It is only when questioned at some length that the street vendor will communicate in words that mean sense to him or her how the occurrence was as an experience within which they were a participant.
Intentionality and the phenomenological attitude are the cornerstones of phenomenology (see Moustakas, 1994; Sokolowski, 2000; Gunther, 2004; Moran, 2005; Cerbone, 2006). People are always conscious of an experience and the manner in which that experience is taken in by the concerned individual. Furthermore, Cerbone (2006:44) argues that:
Our pre-ontological understanding of being, as an ongoing engagement with, and responsiveness to, the entities we encounter, cannot be detached or understood in isolation from those very entities. Our understanding of being is always “situated”,
95 | P a g e and phenomenology cannot, on pain of distortion and falsification, fail to attend to the ways in which our understanding is located in a broader context.
This is to say that within the phenomenology school of thought existence is thought of as contextual most importantly. The being that is subject to being is an emplaced individual of history, character, and subjectivity as some of the more consequential realities of their being.
Continuing with the street vendor example; the street vendor cannot be said to take in the experience of having ‘street kids’ begging close to their stand as someone who is not cognisant of some personal opinions, history, and experiences with regards to ‘street kids’. Ultimately, phenomenology looks at those experiences that may be taken for granted in regards to their experience as they are experienced in an everyday manner, i.e. with an assumed familiarity- cum-understanding (see Buttimer, 1976; Pollio et al., 1997; Paterson and Hughes, 1999).
Experience in the everyday sense is an experiential spatial reality of numerous ‘objects’ (or
‘events’ or ‘dialogues’ or ‘conversations’ or ‘inter-existence’) in somewhat continuous constitution (see Bannan, 1967; Zahavi, 2003; Cerbone, 2006:46). This is to say that the individual who experiences an existence-influenced experience does so as in a progression of experience that includes that experience as well as part of the experience field or selection. For example, the street vendor experiences the street kids as an experience most probably brought on by a certain time of the day. This experience is an experience which might follow the experience of people in formal attire going to (and coming from) work in the same manner as that of experiencing police people chasing away homeless people from the busy streets. This is to say that the experience is possibly one in a long line of many from the lifeworld (Buttimer, 1976:280). The experiences just so happen to be reflected upon by the individual as consequential experiences of situated existence.
For all of the above realities of existence and its experience, existential phenomenology then highlights the human body as that ‘thing’ in which any such experience can emanate. The argument is that it is in the body that there can be consciousness, a notion of intentionality, an experience, and the understanding and explanation of the essence of experience (see Bannan,
96 | P a g e 1967; Merleau-Ponty, 1962; Buttimer, 1976; Giorgi, 1983; Pollio et al., 1997). It would be quite silly to think of experience as being that of nothing (in terms of allocation to a subject) when referring to the ‘what/who is’ question of experience. It is the human body which – no matter its condition (health or ailment of sort in its constitution) – experiences a lifeworld and is consequentially affected in turn by such experience (Merleau-Ponty, 1962:136; Cerbone, 2006). For instance, the street vendor is a body that is situated and experiences certain realities of its world of existence.
The body is argued as a point of view from which a person “cannot take a point of view”
(Bannan, 1967:68). This is to say that the body makes points of view. The body is a sort of unmoved moving mover. Merleau-Ponty (1962:217) argues that:
Vision is a thought subordinated to a certain field, and this is what is called a sense.
When I say that I have senses and that they give me access to the world…, I merely express this truth which forces itself upon reflection taken as a whole: that I am able, being connatural with the world, to discover a sense in certain aspects of being without having myself endowed them with it through constituting operation.
In other words, the view that the body perceives and thus experiences is the most pressing view that the body can and is experiencing at that point in its existence. For example, as I am sitting in a rather awkward angle as I write these words, my eyes as the perceiving parts of my body are thus conscious that they currently see what I am writing at an angle as my body as conduit of perception allows them to be. I am thinking that my handwriting could do much better if only I tried hard enough to not be writing at such an angle. Ultimately, it is the body which is there (being a) being-in-the-world, taking part in experience, and then reflecting upon the experience as a consequential one within its lifeworld.
The above-mentioned perceiving should not be confused with a constituting action of a world wherein the eyes make the world piecemeal. The perceiving is rather a conversation to be had (and always in the process of being had) with the world by the individual. This is most evident when thinking of the presence of other people within the experience of existence (Cohen, 1979;
Dreyfus, 1991; Sadala and Adorno, 2002). The street vendor sees people in her lifeworld. The characterisation of perception does not mean to say that the street vendor makes these people with each of his or her perceptions of them. That would be ludicrous. Rather the street vendor
97 | P a g e assumes a point of view from which, in the resultant perception field, the people labelled ‘street kids’ come into view and are experienced (Bannan, 1967: 111; Cohen and Omery, 1994). These
‘street kids’ also experience the presence of the street vendor – under the banner of whatever label the ‘kids’ individually give him or her – in the same manner of possible view point brought into view and experience.
The foregoing arguments of phenomenology do work rather well into the aims of this research undertaking. This should be especially evident when recalling the preamble of this chapter. I have already made mention that I look to understand how students experience their emplacement within their respective tertiary education institutions through walking. At its most rudimentary explanation this research undertaking is a look at how immersion within scenes of images feeds into the experience of the emplaced individual. This is to document and interpret how it is that individuals, as contextualised individuals, walk into and out of the constituent parts/scenes of their lifeworld as qualities that are either consequential or inconsequential to the overall quality of experience of site and situation. Within this broad phenomenological approach, in this thesis I am interested in particular in what it means existentially to be a walker of a tertiary education institution.