Toward an Open Sense of Place: Phenomenology, Affinity, and the Question of Being

Abstract

This article contributes to ongoing efforts in human geography to theorize place as a basis for progressive politics by linking recent work in phenomenology with contemporary interpretations of affinity politics. The phenomenological insight is that existence is a foundational kind of placing through which the world presents itself and that a place-based ontology can be developed by exploring the features of situatedness. Affinity politics involves creating noncoercive, cooperative, and spontaneous relationships through direct action and mutual aid. The argument presented here is that an embodied awareness of place is a kind of affinity politics aimed at possibilities for self-determination through deep relationships with other human and nonhuman beings. This open sense of place is revealed in the existential attunement to wonder and compassion, a mode of being that derives from attending to the world in utter watchfulness, without thinking, while engaging the edges of lifeworld to reveal existence as a situated connectedness of flow, orientation, and exchange. The article concludes by discussing the implications of this argument for geographical praxis.

Este artículo contribuye a los esfuerzos actuales de la geografía humana para teorizar el lugar como base para políticas progresivas conectando el trabajo reciente en fenomenología con interpretaciones contemporáneas de políticas de afinidad. La mirada fenomenológica es que la existencia es una clase fundacional de establecimiento del lugar a través del cual el mundo se presenta a si mismo y que una ontología basada en lugar puede ser desarrollada mediante la exploración de los rasgos situacionales. La política de afinidad involucra crear relaciones no-coercitivas, cooperativas y espontáneas mediante la acción directa y ayuda mutua. El argumento presentado aquí es que una conciencia marcada de lugar es una clase de política de afinidad dirigida a las posibilidades para la autodeterminación mediante relaciones profundas con otros seres humanos y no humanos. Este sentido abierto acerca del lugar es revelado en la sintonía existencial de admiración y compasión, un modo de ser que proviene de atender al mundo en una total vigilancia, sin pensar, mientras que se juntan los bordes del mundo viviente para revelar la existencia como una conexión situacional de flujo, orientación, e intercambio. El artículo concluye discutiendo las implicancias de este argumento para la práctica geográfica.

Key Words:

• affinity
• ontology
• phenomenology
• place

关键词:

• 亲和
• 本体论
• 现象学
• 地点

Palabras clave:

• afinidad, ontología
• fenomenología
• lugar

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the five anonymous reviewers who provided exceptionally helpful and constructive critiques of two earlier drafts of this article. We would also like to extend our gratitude to Audrey Kobayashi for her guidance and patience throughout the peer-review process. The authors are responsible for the content of the argument as well as for any remaining errors or omissions.

Notes

1. By definition, the conditions of one's existence are part of civil society, as is the effort to manage those conditions. The affinity impulse, however, is to create radical relationships, actions, and spaces that do not depend on civil institutions for their sanctioning (as in the tradition of liberal reform) or motivation (as in the tradition of class-based revolution).

2. There is, of course, no single existential ontology. Our “existential approach” simply implies that to account for ontology first means accounting for existence.

3. Self-determination refers to the individual and collective capacity for choice, growth, and expression without external compulsion or interference; the concept is often used to refer more specifically to political sovereignty for indigenous and other national groups. It is a problematic term for this article, however, because we are describing a form of embodiment that transcends self and other. In this sense, self-determination is a shorthand label for a kind of awareness grounded in a deep understanding of ontological situatedness, which we describe in terms of being attuned to wonder and compassion. Despite the intrinsic limitations to the phrase, we use it periodically throughout the article to refer to this broader idea of existential awareness and connectedness.

4. The Burning Man Festival is an annual participant-driven event in experimental community that started in San Francisco but now is held in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada with an estimated 48,000 attendees. For more information, please refer to The Burning Man Project at http://www.burningman.com (last accessed 5 July 2010). The Dazzle Dancers are a performance troupe founded in New York City in 1996. Their mission is to use the “powerful forces of dance, glitter, fun … and deep-felt group unity” to create an “infectious energy with audiences … and spread a message of love and sexual freedom.” For more information, please refer to their Web site at http://www.dazzledancers.com (last accessed 5 July 2010).

5. For more information on the Affinity Project, please refer to the group's Web site at http://www.affinityproject.org. Details on the history and evolving mission of the Earth Liberation Front are available at http://www.earth-liberation-front.org (last accessed 5 July 2010).

6. We recognize that many readers will interpret “enduring finitude” as a contradiction in terms. The point we are trying to convey is that being is most fundamentally a kind of situated “presencing” that simultaneously begins and ends but endures nonetheless as the “event” or “happening” of the world (and by extension, any knowledge of it). This “presencing” is a necessary precondition for notions of space and time, including their conceptualization in Western philosophy as universal, linear, and extended. The very act of conceptualizing space and time presupposes a dynamic situatedness within which such knowledge is possible.