# Phenomenology [Wikipedia Link](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenomenology_(philosophy)) ( 1900s – present ) ## Description Philosophical method, founded by Edmund Husserl and developed by Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, that describes the structures of lived, embodied experience — perception, intentionality, the "life-world" — as directly encountered, bracketing scientific or theoretical explanation to ask how things first show up as meaningful to a subject. Relevant to my research chiefly through its offshoots in film and media theory (Sobchack's phenomenology of cinematic experience, Marks's haptic visuality) and in queer/trans and other critical phenomenologies that extend embodied orientation into questions of identity and power — offering an embodied counterpoint to the psychoanalytic subject of [[Cinematic Apparatus]] theory and a philosophical frame for the "untutored eye" Brakhage pursues in [[Metaphors on Vision]]. ## Key Tags #phenomenology #philosophy #film-theory #the-body ## Essential Works - Husserl, Edmund. *Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology*. 1913. - founding statement of phenomenological method: intentionality and the epoché (bracketing) - Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. *Phenomenology of Perception*. 1945. - embodiment as the basis of perception, central to nearly all phenomenological film theory - Sobchack, Vivian. *The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience*. Princeton University Press, 1992. - founding text of film phenomenology, theorizing cinema as an embodied, intersubjective encounter between film and viewer - Marks, Laura U. *The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses*. Duke University Press, 2000. - develops "haptic visuality" from phenomenological accounts of embodied, sensory perception - Ahmed, Sara. *Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others*. Duke University Press, 2006. - extends phenomenology's account of bodily orientation into queer theory ## Details ### Key Theorists - Edmund Husserl - founder of phenomenology; intentionality and the epoché (bracketing of the "natural attitude") as core method - Martin Heidegger - existential phenomenology of being-in-the-world (*Being and Time*) - Maurice Merleau-Ponty - grounds perception in the lived body rather than a disembodied consciousness, the pivot point for most phenomenological film theory - Vivian Sobchack - applies phenomenology directly to cinema, theorizing the film as a viewing/viewed body in its own right - [[Laura U. Marks]] - haptic visuality and embodied, cross-sensory spectatorship in intercultural cinema - [[Sara Ahmed]] - queer phenomenology of orientation, objects, and "being out of line" ### Exemplary Practitioners - [[Stan Brakhage]] - the "untutored eye" of [[Metaphors on Vision]] pursues, in cinematic terms, something close to Husserl's epoché: bracketing habitual, named perception to recover vision as directly lived ### Related Concepts - [[The Body]] - phenomenology's grounding of perception in the lived body underlies this page's embodiment thread - [[Cinematic Apparatus]] - film phenomenology (Sobchack) offers an embodied counter-model to apparatus theory's psychoanalytic, disembodied spectator - [[Queer Theory]] - Ahmed's queer phenomenology extends embodied orientation into questions of sexuality, space, and power - [[Flicker and Entoptics]] - shares an interest in perception encountered directly, prior to naming or habituated interpretation - [[Vision]] - phenomenology's account of embodied perception underlies much of this broader concept's critical vocabulary ### Creative and Technical Practices %% none yet %% ### Associated Movements or Institutions %% none yet %% ## References ### Primary Sources Bibliography Husserl, Edmund. *Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology*. 1913. Heidegger, Martin. *Being and Time*. 1927. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. *Phenomenology of Perception*. 1945. Sobchack, Vivian. *The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience*. Princeton University Press, 1992. Marks, Laura U. *The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses*. Duke University Press, 2000. Ahmed, Sara. *Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others*. Duke University Press, 2006. [https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388074](https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822388074). ### Secondary Sources Bibliography Ahmed, Sara. "Orientations." *GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies* 12, no. 4 (2006): 543–74. [https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-002](https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-2006-002). Graeber, David. *On the Phenomenology of Giant Puppets*. n.d. Keegan, Cáel M. "Revisitation: A Trans Phenomenology of the Media Image." *MedieKultur* 32, no. 61 (2016). [https://doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v32i61.22414](https://doi.org/10.7146/mediekultur.v32i61.22414). Louchakova, Olga. "Ontopoiesis and Spiritual Emergence: Bridging Tymieniecka's Phenomenology of Life and Transpersonal Psychology." In *Phenomenology of Life from the Animal Soul to the Human Mind*, edited by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, vol. 94, 43–68. Analecta Husserliana. Springer Netherlands, 2006. [https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5182-1_4](https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-5182-1_4). Murphy, Ann V., et al. "Queer Performativity." In *50 Concepts for a Critical Phenomenology*. Northwestern University Press, 2019. Talijan, Emilija. "Listening to Things: Foley as 'Alien Phenomenology' and Peter Strickland's *Berberian Sound Studio*." In *Resonant Bodies in Contemporary European Art Cinema*, 145–68. University Press, 2022. [https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474483476-009](https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474483476-009).