Noematics 101, an inquiry into writing as phenomenology

To see characters such as Anna Karenina or Captain Ahab as they are, or were, or the places described in books, we are seeing what we imagine, not precisely what the author saw or imagined. But we do see images from the words that the author has provided for us to use to imagine , which often is not so much physical as trait-based. Was Anna a raving dark-eyed beauty? Was Ahab's left or right leg pegged with whalebone? Got me, but these physical incidentals are not as evocative of a person as what they thought and said and did.

Akilesh Ayyar in an article about how writers write novels on The Millions , divides their processes--as described by a number of notable authors--into roughly two novel-writer types, planners and pansters, the former premeditated and executing based on thought-through plots, characters, and so forth, the latter just letting it fly from whatever start they happen to choose. However, These divisions are not to deny the facts that writing itself constitutes a kind of planning, if only in retrospect, and that the lines between glimmering visions, developed thoughts, preparatory notes, preliminary sketches, and first drafts blur. Planners certainly do not and cannot plan everything, and even the incorrigibly spontaneous no doubt fall into certain involuntary spasms of planning. Take this a step further. Both kinds of writers, before placing the final full stop and declaring the written ready for its reader, at that end point, the final copy of the writing process, there is the finishing...

direct-experience ("re-creation") or about-experiencing ("report") DRAFT Background The following is a writing and research process I used for a study  some years ago. It is an example of qualitative research, grounded in phenomenology and hermeneutics, which, if the specific dialectic-iterative method is used, the result will be a phenomenological description of (a slice of) human experience. (Or will it produce just another piece of writing? Jury to convene on this matter later.) The process and product are academic and verbal in nature. This does not exclude other representations of doing phenomenology. For example, one could consider a work of art or a piece of music as providing the structure and essence of a phenomenon, in addition to being a phenomenon in and of itself. These non-verbal practices of seeing what is and understanding same are not addressed here. Sources are noted throughout with a short list of references at the end. Terms charac...

DRAFT A hermeneutic phenomenology--inductive, dialectical, iterative, reflexive process for producing a phenomenological description DATA Review claimed account(s) of a phenomenon Construct a preliminary definition/description/example of the phenomenon to use as a beginning tool for inclusion Apply this delimitation to the account(s) selected Sort accounts based on direct-experience ("re-creation") or about-experiencing ("report") Select the richest account(s) for inclusion BRACKETING Identify, set aside, account for all biases and assumptions with reference to the phenomenon Detail the inquirer's interest and participation in the phenomenon Place the inquirer into the mix of what the phenomenon is and how it is experienced As appropriate, include the inquirer's experience of the phenomenon into the mix of accounts CODING Place each account into, for example, a table and separate into meaning units (e.g., sentences) Code t...

Draft model, as phenomenology. The Environmental Studies Association of Canada posted a call for papers in 2013 (http://esac.ca/2013/10/call-for-papers-btttt-weather/) with the title, DOING PHENOMENOLOGY: BACK TO THE THINGS THEMSELVES! In short, they wanted papers that met these qualifications. 1. A detailed, rigorous, extended and original description of a phenomenon in the lived world. 2. An explication of the method used to generate this description. In detailing the second point, they note that the goal should be to show the audience how a description was generated. Explications of method should be stated in broad terms, and overly-detailed textual exegesis should be relegated to footnotes or appendices in order to preserve the "flow" of a description. We are interested in how our panelists have learned from, applied, adjusted, merged, questioned, subverted or otherwise deployed a variety of phenomenological methods in the development of their own phenomenologi...

Now paint this! Yesterday someone asked me to give a brief explanation of phenomenology. I referred to something she had said not ten minutes before. She was describing how she was painting a scene in an Italian hill town the past week. The light on one wall made of black stone "gave the appearance" that it was blue or violet; and on some days the wall appeared in various shades of gray, red or brown. Regardless of the causes of the different appearances, her painting was intended to capture the colors as the wall appeared to her. Not as she knew it to be. Forget knowledge. Her focus and goal: What color is the wall today as I am painting it today? Some viewers, she admitted, would not understand why she represented a black stone wall in shimmering tones of purple, but that is as it is, she said. She would have expressed her true perception of the thing as it is. Some would see it, others not. And by doing just that, a one-hundred percent accurate demonstration, she w...