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

I am very happy to have no conscripts or recruits to this fatuous programme, though I will admit that it would make me happy to think that there might be some who might be infected by my interest in encouraging new ways in which work on culture could work out. Because cultural phenomenology doesn't require you to pass an accrediting examination, undergo a medical, or even learn a special handshake, there is, I am afraid, no way of knowing in advance whether you are going to qualify as a cultural phenomenologist. That, naturally, and infuriatingly, is the point. By the same token, and more cheerfully, or nerve-wrackingly, depending on your attitude, there is no guarantee that you will be able to stop turning into one at times (you would be insane to think you could do cultural phenomenology all the time). But here, for the record, and to be going on with, are a few no-doubt unwilling conscripts to the raggle-taggle, part-time army of cultural phenomenologists: Michel Serres, Vivian Sobchack, Maud Ellmann, Rachel Bowlby, Marina Warner, Thomas Docherty, David Trotter, Greil Marcus, Tim Armstrong, Gregory L. Ulmer, as well as my colleagues Stephen Clucas and Isobel Armstrong.