Season five of our podcast continues with another presentation from our 2020 annual conference: ‘Engaged Phenomenology’ Online. This episode features D. R. Koukal, University of Detroit Mercy.
ABSTRACT: In this paper the author will report on an ongoing experiment: teaching graduate-level students of architecture how to use phenomenology as a technique of discovery to assist them in their design process. This experiment originated in directed readings that attempted to theoretically engage phenomenologically-informed “schools” of architecture, and over fifteen years has evolved into a small seminar-workshop that is focused on having students produce their own rigorous phenomenological analyses in the service of their various thesis projects. The paper will convey the challenges of grounding non-philosophers in the demanding literature of phenomenology and its place in modern thought, and then move on to outline the basic features of the course: exposure to the “orthodox” methodologies of phenomenology; highlighting examples of phenomenological analyses of place and space by philosophers and practicing architects; and an exploration of different ways of doing phenomenology collaboratively. However, most of the paper will be focused on the “practical” dimension of the course, where every member has a say in refining an adopted collaborative methodology to phenomenologically explore a different architectural “theme” every week, all of which are chosen by the class as a whole. These explorations have taken a variety of forms over the years, including peer-reviewed free writing, directed “free” writing, sketches, illustrations, word clouds, meaning-schematics, collaborative narration, and computer-generated eidetic imagery. In the end, the author will report on the course’s successes and failures, but will ultimately conclude that the biggest challenge to any “engaged” phenomenology is motivating others to “see” or intuit what phenomenology can reveal to them, and that the best way of doing this is giving them the tools to “do” phenomenology for themselves.
BIO: D.R. Koukal's research has centered on the phenomenological method and the problem of expression. They have published articles on Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Sartre. They are interested in the actual practice of phenomenology, and have undertaken several investigations of the experience of media, lived space and the body.
This recording is taken from the BSP Annual Conference 2020 Online: 'Engaged Phenomenology'. Organised with the University of Exeter and sponsored by Egenis and the Wellcome Centre for Cultures and Environments of Health. BSP2020AC was held online this year due to global concerns about the Coronavirus pandemic. For the conference our speakers recorded videos, our keynotes presented live over Zoom, and we also recorded some interviews online as well. Podcast episodes from BSP2020AC are soundtracks of those videos where we and the presenters feel the audio works as a standalone: https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/bsp-annual-conference-2020/
You can check out our forthcoming events here:
https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/events/
The British Society for Phenomenology is a not-for-profit organisation set up with the intention of promoting research and awareness in the field of Phenomenology and other cognate arms of philosophical thought. Currently, the society accomplishes these aims through its journal, events, and podcast. Why not find out more, join the society, and subscribe to our journal the JBSP? https://www.britishphenomenology.org.uk/
Tom Hey - 'A Phenomenological Approach to Bulimia'
Ida Djursaa - 'Towards a Critical Phenomenology of the Erotic'
Kira Meyer - 'Ecophenomenology as a Contribution to Transformation'
Dr Ullrich Haase - ‘Is Heidegger’s Other Thinking necessarily an Ecological Thinking? Reflections on the Absence of Nature and the Destiny of Technology’
Prof. Giovanna Colombetti - ‘Varieties of incorporation: beyond the blind man’s cane’
Prof. Alia Al-Saji - 'Fanon and an Engaged Phenomenology of Affect: Touching the wounds of colonial duration'
Marieke Borren - ‘The Spatial Phenomenology of White Embodiment’
Ondra Kvapil - ‘Thought-provoking Death’
Sam McAuliffe - ‘The Improvisational Encounter: What is Common to Music and Hermeneutic-Phenomenology’
Adriano Lotito - ‘Tran Duc Thao between Phenomenology and Marxism’
Maria-Nefeli Panetsos - ‘Dancing Phenomenology: A New Source of Non-Verbal Knowledge’
Pablo Fernandez Velasco - ‘Evenki wandering and situationist wandering’
Mary Coaten - ‘Dance Movement Psychotherapy in Acute Adult Psychiatry: Psyche and Dasein’
María Jimena Clavel Vázquez - ‘Perceiving like a girl? Sensorimotor Enactivism in the face of situated embodiment’
Mary Fridley & Gwen Lowenheim presenting for Susan Massad - ‘Creating a New Performance of Dementia’
Giuseppe Torre - ‘Noise, Phenomena and the Digital Psychosis’
Joel Krueger - ‘Taking Watsuji online: aidagara and expression in the techno-social niche’
Juan Toro - ‘The Ecological-Enactive Model of Disability: Why disability does not entail pathological embodiment’
Ellen Moysan - ‘Phenomenological Description of the Notion of Inner Song: Doing Phenomenology to Understand Music Practice’
Bence Peter Marosan - ‘Engaged Eco-phenomenology. An Eco-socialist stance based upon a phenomenological account of narrative identity’
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