On Being an Inauthentic Phenomenologist

This note may feel somewhat esoteric. But I felt like calling out this idea in Till’s book because, at the time that I read it, it hit close to some philosophical thoughts I was having.

It has to do with the idea of phenomenology and its relationship to the design of space. I’ve encountered phenomenology in other sources on interaction design (some covered in this blog) and have been attracted to many of the ideas. I like how it emphasizes human experience of the world, which puts a designer’s attention on the context of use (whether physical, social, or cultural).

But, I’ve also had problems with it too. For one thing, that same emphasis on human experience makes a lot of the roots of phenomenology frustratingly enigmatic and difficult to put in simple terms. This leads to a feeling that phenomenologists have been trying to make too much of the idea of “experience,” which ends up putting it outside the realm of the very people who it is meant to describe.

Phenomenology has a history in architecture and Till pulls out some aspects that he finds useful, referencing philosopher Martin Heidegger (whose historical involvement with the Nazis further complicates one’s exploration of phenomenology).

After Heidegger, space can no longer be seen as an abstract and geometric category intuited by the worldless subject, but has to be understood through our lived engagement with world as spatial, “space-ish,” humans… Design in this context requires the imagining of one’s own spatiality within the architecture being designed, understanding that certain aspects of human spatiality are common to all: lightness versus darkness, top versus bottom, directionality, constricted versus open, and so on. Architectural design here becomes a matter not of pushing bits of space around as abstract stuff but of spatiality as a shared cultural and human condition, with an awareness that what we make physically affects that condition spatially. (p.128)

But more importantly, Till puts some words to the misgivings that I have felt in past.

Unfortunately, such a commonly understandable version of spatial perception is too often hijacked in the name of discovering more fundamental aspects of the human condition. A later text by Heidegger, “Building, Dwelling, Thinking,” leads architectural theorists into believing that there are “authentic” aspects to dwelling that can in turn be reflected in “authentic” approaches to the design of architectural space...“Authentic” space can thus be seen as another form of retreat from the vicissitudes of everyday life… What becomes clear is that too many phenomenologists of space fall into the trap of replacing one privileged view of space (the Cartesian) with another privileged version based around the elevated values of the authentic and best apprehended by the virtuous solipsist. (pp.128-129)

As a solution, Till suggests the approach of being an “inauthentic phenomenologist.”

Personally, I am an inauthentic phenomenologist, even if in stating this I run the risk of being a contradiction in terms. This means on one hand fostering a phenomenological understanding of space, but on the other hand dumping all the baggage of authenticity and Being that phenomenology sometimes brings along… An inauthentic phenomenological reading of space understands space in all its lived sense, engaging in it as sensate, bodily beings alert to touch, to light, to scale, to smell, to softness, to heaviness—to all those aspects of space that exceed objective measure… But rejecting the jargon of authenticity also means opening up to the multiple and conflicting aspects of social space, so that the body phenomenal is understood at the same time as a body politic. (p.132)

Essentially, take the parts that are useful and productive, but leave the parts that confuse the issue behind. Which sounds straightforward and designerly, but was quite liberating when I read it.