phenomenology of the text

This experiment may be more trouble than its worth, but after reading Ron Silliman's re-writing of Marx in the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E anthology, I wanted to try something similar with Husserl. Basically, I started with chapters 27-28 of Husserl's Ideas (english translation by W. R. Boyce Gibson) then replaced all references to a world and its objects with references to a text and its elements. Interestingly, I think it clarifies some of the weakness of this early phenomenology that the post-structuralists took issue with. For example, Husserl, I believe, is correct in asserting that value-judgments about objects are as inherent in our sensory perception of them as, say, elements like color and shape. Yet it feels that something is being glossed over here, that there could be a whole phenomenology devoted to the reception and formation of such value-judgments. They are given, yes, in the sense that they are always there, but they also fluctuate wildly relative such static elements of color and shape. Indeed, it seems to me they are constantly being informed, reformed, molded in a sort of dialogue or conversation that is always taking place between ourselves and others -- a dialogue laden with political passions, desire for mutual recognition, a dialogue to explore and determine the very meaning of the intersubjective world that we share and co-create. Nothing in our shared world is neutral, except to someone who just doesn't care (and even this apathy is rooted in disappointment and sorrow). Every conversation is, in a sense, an inquiry into whether or not this or that has the same meaning for oneself as it does for the other (or a celebration or the fact that it does, or, in the case of disagreements, a contest to determine who has the right to determine the meaning for the other). It seems to me that this is precisely "where" language poetry seeks to insert itself -- it wishes to expose this dialogue, to distrupt the rules by which its proceeds, to confuse it, destabilize it. Why? Becuase those rules inevitably benefit those who already have the upper hand. If we can shake those rules up then we stand of chance of really encountering one another, or really creating something new together. I'm thinking now of something I read in Morton Feldman's memoires, something to the effect of: abstract expressionism happened when, all of sudden, no one knew what painting was any more. I suspect that one of the strategies of language poetry was to create a parallel condition in the realm of language art . . . and maybe it even entertained hope that its effects would ripple outward so that, all of a sudden, we'd know longer knew what it means to talk to one another -- thereby permiting us to really talk for the first time.

I am aware of a text, spread out potentially endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immediately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc., in the different ways of sensory perception, the corporeal letters somehow spatially distributed are for me simple there [ . . . ] whether or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them, considering, thinking , feeling, willing. Phrases also, perhaps complete thoughts or sentences, are immediately there for me; I look at the page, I see them, I hear them coming towards me, I grasp them, as it were, by the hand; letting them speak to me, I understand immediately their senses, the feelings that may have stirred them, what wishes or willing may have inscribed them on page. They too are present as realities in my field of reading, even when I pay them no attention. But it is not necessary that they and other parts of the text likewise should be present precisely in my field of perception. For me real textual elements are there, definite, more or less familiar, agreeing with what is actually perceived without being themselves perceived or even intuitively present. I can let my attention wander from this page I have just seen and observed, through the unseen portions of the text on prior pages, to other stanzas, sections, chapters, books, and so forth, to all the textual elements concerning which I precisely “know” that they are there and yonder in my immediate co-perceived surrounds – a knowledge which has nothing of conceptual reading in it [ . . .]

But not even with the added reach of this intuitively clear or dark, distinct or indistinct co-present margin, which forms a continuous ring around the actual field of perception, does that text exhaust itself which in every waking moment is in some conscious measure “present” before me [ . . .]

As it is with the text in its ordered being as a spatial present – the aspect I have so far been considering – so likewise is it with the text in respect to its ordered being in the succession of time. This text now present to me, and in every waking “now” obviously so, has its temporal horizon, potentially infinite in both directions, its known and unknown, its intimately alive and its unalive past and future. Moving freely within the moment of experience which brings what is present into my intuitional grasp, I can [ . . .] shift my standpoint in space and time, looks this way and that, turn temporally forward and backwards; I can provide for myself constantly new and more or less clear and meaningful perceptions and representations, and images also more less clear, in which I make intuitable to myself whatever can possibly exist really or supposedly in the steadfast order of textual space and textual time.

In this way, when consciously awake within the text, I find myself at all times and without my ever being able to change this, set in relation to a text which, through its constant changes, remains one and ever the same. It is continually “present” for me, and I myself am a member of it. Therefore this text is not there for as a mere text of statements and representations, but, with the same immediacy, as a text of values, a text of goods, a practical text. Without further effort on my part, I find the textual elements before me furnished not only with the qualities that befit their positive nature, but with value-characters such as beautiful or ugly, agreeable or disagreeable, pleasant or unpleasant, and so forth. The textual elements in their immediacy stand there as objects to be used, the noun with its adjectives, the prepositional phrase, the proper name, and so forth. These values and practicalities, they too belong to the constitution of the “actually present” text as such, irrespective of my turning or not turning to consider them or indeed any other objects [ . . .]

It is then to this text, the text in which I find myself and which is also my text-about-me, that the complex forms of my manifold and shifting spontaneities of consciousness stand related: observing in the interests of research the bringing of meaning into conceptual form through description; comparing and distinguishing, collecting and counting, presupposing and inferring, the theorizing activity of consciousness, in short, in its different forms and stages. Related to it likewise are the diverse acts and states of sentiment and disapproval, joy and sorrow, desire and aversion, hope and fear, decision and action. All these, together with sheer acts of the Ego, in which I become acquainted with the text as immediately given to me, through spontaneous tendencies to turn towards it and grasp it, are included under the one expression: the Reader. In the natural urge of life I live continually in this fundamental form all “wakeful” living [. . .]

Whatever hold for me personally as a Reader, also hold, as I know, for all other Readers whom I find present in the text-about-me. Experiencing them as Readers, I understand and take them as Ego-subjects, units like myself, and related to their natural textual surroundings. But this in such wise that I apprehend the text-about-them and the text-about-me objectively as one and the same text, which differs in each case only through affecting consciousness differently. Each has her or his place whence she or he sees the textual elements that are present and each enjoys accordingly different appearances of the textual elements. For each, again, the fields of perception and memory actually present are different, quite apart form the fact that even that which is here intersubjectively known in common is known in different ways, is differently apprehended, shows different grades of clearness, and so forth. Despite all this, we come to understandings with our neighbors, and set up in common an objective spatio-temporal fact-text as the text about us that is there for us all, and to which we ourselves none the less belong.