Phenomenology and the Work of Art

Catalog description

According to phenomenology, the task of the philosopher is to describe the ways in which we experience the world as living, sensing, and feeling beings. Phenomenology starts by asking us to cultivate a way of seeing and sensing the world by means of an attentiveness to the present moment of experience that might allow us to describe more authentically the phenomena we encounter. Phenomenologists are concerned with how we experience the appearance of “things themselves,” as Edmund Husserl advocated, whether we are encountering a thunderstorm, a protest, or a painting. In this course we will examine critical texts from the phenomenological tradition beginning with its modern foundation (Edmund Husserl, 1859-1938), attending to the philosophical legacy that followed (Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty), and culminating with contemporary critical phenomenologies (Iris Marion Young, Alia Al-Saji, George Yancy). Because works of art offer some of the most potent and important phenomenological encounters, we will attune ourselves to phenomenologies of architecture (Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space), phenomenologies of dance (dance improvisation and Pina Bausch’s choreography), and phenomenologies of painting (Paul Cezanne and Francis Bacon). We will culminate our study by considering how contemporary critical phenomenology complicates our investigations of these works of art and the ways in which our experiences are conditioned by social and political forces beyond our fashioning.