Vignettes

Since phenomenology is the study of intuitively lived experiene and perception/cognition of objects, it’s natural that it’s both highly general and yet quite easy to understand when we are presented with good examples. Today I was thinking of the process of “bracketing”, or epoché, whereby the phenomenologists temporarily suspends belief in the world [as presented to us] and attempts to gaze upon it without prejudice. Just as when we watch a movie or participate in a role-playing game, we suspend disbelief in order to recognize murders as representations and DIY sheets as heroic capes, phenomenological bracketing can be an attempt at whittling away preconception and seeing things as they are. Does this sound pretensious or impossible? Well, I don’t blame you. But there is quite a lot of reason behind the exercise. Even though we can’t overcome all of our biases, we can at least be self-aware and reflexive and make adjustments accordingly. But if we look to perception, we see – as Husserl describes – objects, which we impart and [crucially] perceive as having certain characteristics, such as extension in space and temporal permanence. That is, when I look at a chair,  I don’t really have the experience of looking at a particular angle of the chair; I’m not painfully aware that I might only be seeing ‘the trunk of the elephant’ and forgetting its tail. Rather, I simply look and think “oh, a chair”*. In reality of course, what I am seeing is a little sliver of it. The chair from a limited perspective, just one angle. I can move around and have moving eyes, which allows me to get more pictures of the chair into my brain, but I have to mentally compile them into a cohesive, permanent object that I can then deal with.

Consider the fact that infants don’t seem to grasp the concept of “object permanence” (over time), which is why peek-a-boo is a fun for game for them, since they see objects vanishing and reappearing every time. There seem to be mental procedures for compiling disconnected sensory impressions into cohesive objects. Blind people who gain or regain their vision are often unable to cope with the visual impressions they experience; objects appear to be actually shrinking as they move further away, rather than being perceived as more distant; faces are unrecognizable fleshy landscapes that talk and blink, and objects need to be consciously interpreted to be recognized (“OK… it’s about the length of my hand. It’s … shiny grey… I guess that’s metal. Four little things stick out from them, and they’re thin, parallel and seem to be pointed. … is it a fork?”). It’s mentally demanding.

We see the process reflected very closely in art. In children’s art, but equally in all art before the development of naturalistic perspective, drawings are reproductions not of sights-as-seen, but of objects-as-experienced. Houses are drawn symbolically, with impossible perspectives showing their relevant parts: the back door as well as the front door, the chimney and the apple tree in the back yard, all seen as from an imaginary angle. The intentional, object-oriented angle. The same applies to human figures, whether in children’s drawings or in pictograms. Learning how to draw realistically requires — in addition to obvious technical skills, hand-eye coordination, etc. – the ability to properly conduct epoché; to record the actual visual impression on your retina, as you see it in a non-conceptualizing way, and record that. Drawing what you see, not what you think. It’s incredibly difficult. I can’t, which is why it takes a skilled artist to realistically draw perspective, but it is certainly possible.
*Or rather: “Oh, a place for me to sit”