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A Few Don'ts (And Dos) By A Cultural Phenomenologist

Steven Connor

So What Might Cultural Phenomenologists Actually, You Know, Do? 

Since I have already, though by now far too long ago, said that one of the good things about phenomenology is the fact that it is prepositional (phenomenology of this or that), rather than abstractly propositional, it is time that I said what some of the typical subjects and concerns of cultural phenomenology might be. Such a list would be unlikely to line up into a curriculum, though it might brew up a familial sort of commotion. So these are the kinds of thing I imagine cultural phenomenology going in for: 
 

ghosts,         skin,   glass,   whiteness,  
    effigy    ecstasy, ordinariness,   argument,     shaving,
  amplification, luxury,   ventriloquism,     rumour,  
typewriting,    feet,   weeping,     sweetness,  
    juggling,   falling down,   fame, humility, hoarding,
                 hallucination,           speed,       washing,    weather,  
wires slowness      curiosity,   bananas,  
boasting,    arson, addiction,        noise,
weight,  
  comfort,   luck,

 

 shaking  
exemplification, malediction, miniaturisation,        shine smoke  
       invisibility,       infanticide, agoraphobia, table manners,   disgust,
  weddings,
waste,   breathing

 

 silliness, secrecy fatigue,
bags, gossip,
  magic,  

 

 folding  
approximation,   counting,        theft, flying,  
                accidents,    strings,     loss,   lateness,  
 forgetfulness,      complaint,   preciousness,   screens
        clapping,         undergrounds, the private lives of midwives    
teeth,  
  stink,  

 

 flatness jokes, itch dust, lists  

  

  

| Steve Connor | English and Humanities | Birkbeck College |