ABSTRACT
Let’s face it, there are plenty of people who will not be persuaded by this book. I’m referring to those who do phenomenology. Too much is invested in phenomenological research, too many careers depend on it, and too many papers – hundreds, thousands – have been published, for those who regard themselves as phenomenologists to conclude: ‘Maybe he’s got a point’. Nor should they. No research programme is dismantled just because there is evidence that contradicts the favoured theory, or arguments that subvert the preferred method. Read Kuhn, read Lakatos.1 If a research programme can soldier on despite an ‘ocean of anomalies’ or ‘inconsistent foundations’ (Lakatos 1978), there is no reason why phenomenologists should pack up and go home merely because their methods are questioned by a single book. Phenomenology will not become an endangered species. I have a different constituency in mind. The members of this group include the undecided, the waverers, the curious, the provisionally attracted, the secretly baffled, the at-a-loss. They are the ones who are unsure what the alternatives to phenomenology are, and who adopt it not because they are committed to its philosophy – or even have much understanding of it – but because they don’t know what else to do. They are the ones who like the general idea, but are wary of the Slough of Philosophical Despond they are expected to wade through. They are the ones who have been nudged along the phenomenological path by an enthusiastic colleague or an insistent supervisor, but who have not yet abandoned themselves to its arcane and hyphenated terminology. A large proportion of this group are postgraduate students. My main aim is to give this constituency reasons for pausing before they go down the phenomenology route, and to argue that there is an alternative. More than that, it is to provide an indication of what this alternative looks like. I will do a lot of showing. I will invite readers to look closely at examples of phenomenological analysis in both published studies and methodological texts. This will require a certain amount of patience on the reader’s part, and a determination not to let the eye skip and skim over the page, the visual skating act that is often a substitute for reading. Just stop for a moment, I will say, and see what analytical moves the author is making. Do not assume that her account of what she is doing can be trusted. Rather: look, then linger, then look again. By
slowing the reading down, and taking the author’s official description of the analytical process with a pinch of salt, we can see what’s really going on. I’ll also ask a lot of questions. The book is stuffed with them. Questions about the passages I invite the reader to examine. Questions about the implications of a particular view. Questions about the apparent inconsistencies in the author’s argument. Questions about what has not been said. Questions about how certain terms are used, and what they mean. Questions about why phenomenological writers usually do not explain these terms themselves. My hope is that readers will not merely think about these questions, and have a stab at answering them, but will see that they are of critical importance. Phenomenology is a tradition that discourages certain questions from being asked.2 One aim of this book is to get those questions into circulation. So I am trying to persuade the undecided, secretly baffled, at-a-loss constituency; and one of the ways I do that is by inviting them to look closely and ask awkward questions.
