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Murky notion

DRAFT

What is this journey about? what are some preliminary notes about what noematics is? and what are its central concerns?

The initial question for this journey into writing as phenomenology is this: Is a writing--any/all "texts"--a product of phenomenological methods and "a direct description of our experience as it is"?

Noematics (the blog), begun in 2007 and concluded earlier this year, 2012, is a collection of data that begged further examination. Each entry was an attempt to describe a specific something based on the assumption that a piece of writing put forth for a reader was in effect a likeness of what was in the writer's (my) consciousness, a thing or complex of things communicated as carefully and precisely as possible to be experienced and re-experienced as the thing itself. Sometimes the subject of the writing was itself a description of a phenomenon. In spite of this variation, whatever the perspective or type of writing, a piece of writing/text is a partial understanding of what-it-is-like in the fullest sense that language can convey, or so went the assumption.

The experience of composing and contributing to Noematics (the blog) led to seeing writing as an activity that followed methods of phenomenology, and writing's product (always?) at some level looked like a description of what-it-is-like. Could it be that the meticulous procedures of carrying out phenomenology's enterprise in its accepted incarnation since its articulation by Husserl is as simple or complex as what writers intend to do, do, produce, and accomplish? Can we say that all writers are phenomenologists?.

So the journey, not mine alone, is about this notion which appears as if it might grow in import: writing as phenomenology. Or, is writing phenomenology? After all, writing is about understandings of specific things, right?

Noematics as a term has not appeared in print literature to any significant degree since 1800 (http://books.google.com/ngrams). Noematics (the blog) started by suggesting that the term referred to "what is externalized, exposing understanding, albeit partial and a temporary negotiation." That is, noematics were objects of our intentional gaze, and they most often took the form of verbal texts, sometimes visual (i.e., photos), or the two working together. This exposed-understandings meaning of texts may not correctly apply a  little-used word, noematics. But perhaps it could be a proper application. An alternative use for working purposes might be that noematics is the methodical study or examination of texts to lay bare the phenomenon or phenomena held up for us to experience and contemplate. Phenomena/texts worth bothering about, it should be said.

Yes, you should immediately object. Isn't this just another name for interpretation, hermeneutics? I suspect not; but I don't know. One has to examine data claiming to be phenomenological descriptions in order to tell. Examine them against what such descriptions should be. Thus we must uncover the details of whether and how writing equals noema-noesis given different and multi-layered directions of our intentional gaze such as suggested above. That which appears to be both a description of an object and an object itself of our intentional gaze has a quality. I deem that quality noematic, a nexus of perceptible objects, phenomena that we can with some tools and effort comprehend as the thing itself, or multiple things themselves. So noematics still seems a likely candidate to color this enterprise.

And as if that is not enough. . . .  Back to that other (appropriate) thing, the dictionary: Noematics is
"Of, relating to, or involved in noema" (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/noematic)
and
"Of or pertaining to the understanding" (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Noematic).
Thus, exposed or uncovered understandings of subjects, or the quality of considering these, if you like.

We need to be clear and precise about what we are talking about. Given, and our mission is just that. In addition, does the view that a writing as/is phenomenology have any proponents? Is the activity or process of doing phenomenology the same as or similar to the activity or process of writing? If so, at what levels of description might this be so? How much of a claim can phenomenology as/is writing be made? Are texts that
claim to be descriptions of what-it-is-like, or how something is held in consciousness, or that they are the essence of a phenomenon
and
any/all writing-as-phenomenology
the same? If different, in what ways?

So this is a start. The data so far generated for this purpose can help (Consider the illustrative texts below, a poem and its explication, or the photo.). Other data can be marshaled to make the conversation less circular and introspective. We can also enlist the authority of others to help enrich and develop the inquiry.

So to begin.

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Contributions to the subjects of this journey welcome.

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