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What is (a) writing


From a glossary of phenomenology*, we have these.
Intentionality: The term "intentionality" indicates the inseparable connectedness of the human being to the world. Brentano, and later Husserl, argued that the fundamental structure of consciousness is intentional (Spiegelberg, 1982). And every conscious experience is bi-polar: there is an object that presents itself to a subject or ego. This means that all thinking (imagining, perceiving, remembering, etc.) is always thinking about something. The same is true for actions: grasping is grasping for something, hearing is hearing something, pointing is pointing at something. All human activity is always oriented activity, directed by that which orients it. In this way we discover a person's world or landscape. We are not reflexively conscious of our intentional relation to the world. Intentionality is only retrospectively available to consciousness. Or as Merleau-Ponty said, the world is revealed to us as ready-made and already "there".
In short, for purposes of this narrowed discussion, intentionality is our "inseparable connectedness" to the world and through this orientation we discover the "person's world or landscape" and our own. My world and yours are ready-made but can be revealed through retrospection and/or the experience of the representations (descriptions) of same, that is sans me the media through which you can see mine and I can see yours.

Breaking down the intentional, we orient to noemata.
Noema: (noematic) denotes that to which we orient ourselves; it is the object referent of noesis, the noetic act.
A phenomenon that one wishes to understand, that is this object, if at an early stage but partially defined and described. The noematic question here then is, What is (the nature of this phenomenon we call at this point) a writing? The noema is a what.

How we orient amplifies what the object is through externalizing how we experience the orientation and the object.
Noesis: the interpretive act directed to an intentional object, the noema (or the noematic object).
Noesis is how I experience (understand) the noema, as revealed by rich description, to borrow a phrase. The question then is, What is it like to write? or to experience a writing? Noesis is how.

The term writing (the thing not the activity) has caused some to question whether or not they are writers, what all the activities are that comprise writing, and so forth.

Writing and writer here are to be understood in the most general sense. That is:
Writing is that constellation of activities that in the final stage puts, and implicitly approves, strings of words together into a medium such that they will be read or heard and understood by another.
Thus, a writer is one who performs these activities and brings them to a product or artifact.
There are no restrictions or categories for writer. Writers write love letters, messages on the fridge about when the s/he will return from shopping, office memos, and yes, trashy novels as well as stuff we call literature.

The noema that is a writing is the-written-to-be-read/heard. The noesis is how I (reader/listener) experience/understand the-written-to-be-read/heard.

In whole or in parts, a writing is an intentional object to which we direct ourselves when experiencing, our inseparable connectedness to the world. More on this thread, of course. Just a moment.

Thus the next dilemma--if a writing is the thing or object of intentional orientation and its reception the noesis, what then of writing as act or practice--the noema and noesis of the writer writing?

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* The glossary listings come from Max van Manen and the web site,  www.phenomenologyonline.com, copyright 2000. I believe this glossary is no longer accessible via the web. However, van Manen is a key and trusted authority. More later about and from Max, who for his part has a most rich description of what phenomenological writing is.

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