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This research looks at both subjective and objective ways of mediating our experience of the natural world through art and concludes that both approaches are of value. It considers art (and in particular abstract art) as a language, or text, to be read and interpreted objectively as well as a means of subjective, poetic expression. It explores the possibility that colour (as a medium that is both relative and at the same time subjective) may provide a useful link between a subjective and objective perception of t.De..,natural world. IV .•• It demonstrates that the theories and practice of abstraction, language and colour are intertwined. It proposes that phenomenology, and especially the work of Merleau-Ponty, links these areas of cultural thought and activity; and that the practical, ethical and embodied expression of this philosophy can be represented through walking, expressed as a physical activity and mediated through art. Practically, the research was developed in the studio and tracked through a series of written chapters written one at a time over a period of six years. A contextual overview has been added at the end of each chapter. These were written after the last chapter (chapter ten) was completed, and constructed within the space of a couple of months. This overlapping of time frames serves to highlight the Bricolage methodology used throughout the PhD. This approach, first proposed by Levis Strauss (The Savage Mind, 1962) 'acknowledges that research takes place in the real world - is complex and sometimes 'messy', open to change, interaction and development' (Gray and Malins, 2004). The written content of the PhD is presented alongside an exhibition of work in the Reg Vardy Gallery in Sunderland, demonstrating the link between theory and practice that the methodology employed highlights. Mike Collier, supervised by Dr. Carol McKay and Professor Brian Thompson, September 2010 9

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Writing the Self: Case Studies in Phenomenology and Fiction explores the way in which the notions of self, being and consciousness find expression in works of literary fiction and philosophical texts. It raises the question of whether there are paradigmatic features that are distinctive to philosophy and imaginative literature in their engagement with ontology. Whilst discussing various works of imaginative literature and philosophy, this thesis concentrates on aspects of Husserlian phenomenology and Martin Heidegger's Being and Time (1962) from the philosophical tradition and focuses on three selected works of post-1900 literary fiction: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902), Virginia Woolfs The Waves (1931), and Saul Bellow's Dangling Man (1944). In an essay on "Literary Attestation in Philosophy", Robert Bernasconi asks, "Literary texts have a certain autonomy, but what happens to them when they are submitted to philosophically inspired readings?"(Bernasconi in Woods 1990: 24). This thesis argues that literary texts need not be "submitted" to philosophically inspired readings. Bernasconi makes an error by using the word "submitted". The texts themselves are not written with a view to supporting the philosophical claims made in a philosophical treatise. This is how both philosophy and literature retain their autonomy. This thesis will demonstrate how autonomy functions differently from insularity purporting that such a distinction is often overlooked. What is not being investigated in this thesis is whether or not philosophy can be used to prove fiction as an application of philosophical ideas. Rather, what is intended is to read them both as different enterprises but at the same time together. Coming together is not to be understood in the same way as dissolving the differences that exist between the two. Nor are the two fields to be understood as mutually dependant. Literature does not derive its conception of "literature" in opposition to the conception of philosophy nor vice-versa. Chapter I of this thesis is a discussion of the theoretical foundation upon which the remainder of this thesis will rest. Through the discussion of selected works of philosophy and literary fiction, this chapter will lay down the theoretical parameters of the issues under examination in the chapters that follow. In chapter II Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902) is studied in conjunction with Heideggerean and phenomenological thought. Chapter III takes as its point of departure the question of essence and existence in The Waves (1922) in order to examine the exploration of the Heideggerean notions of the ontic and the ontological. Chapter IV focuses on Bellow's Dangling Man (1944) and examines the way in which the protagonist's struggle in it is explored as a battle between the particular and the universal, and consequently as a strife between notions of essence and existence and ontic and ontological. The conclusion to this thesis endeavours to provide a premise within which ontology and hermeneutics may be understood in imaginative literature and philosophical writing. The intention is never to prove that a work of fiction is phenomenological or Heideggerean but rather to highlight the treatment of Being, Consciousness and the Self in literary fiction and philosophical enquiry. This thesis aims to understand the manner in which the concepts of the ontic and the ontological are expressed in literary fiction and philosophical texts, and does so by raising the question of whether in fact the literary enterprise as opposed to the philosophical one is more adept at expressing either of the two concepts. Based upon such an examination, this thesis, strives to examine whether or not philosophy and literary fiction exist as two separate enterprises by traversing both the similarities and discrepancies that exist in the two fields.

Husserlian phenomenology has often been cited as having influenced research methodologies within nursing research and psychology. However, at the same time, Husserl is explicitly opposed to what he termed as psychologism. The following thesis argues that Husserl’s opposition to the psychology of his day was based specifically upon his opposition of naturalism’s treatment of consciousness. Moreover, the thesis argues that there is a tendency within the Social Sciences to misread Husserlian Phenomenology as a type of introspectionists’ account of subjective states. The thesis critiques the claim that cognitive therapy is Husserlian phenomenology, but concludes that there are aspects of cognitive psychotherapy which do appear to be using parts of a methodology that Husserl would have recognised as a legitimate phenomenology. Indeed, the thesis argues that by gaining a further understanding of Husserl’s ‘discovery’ of attitude and interest and the fundamental structures of intentionality, cognitive therapists could enhance and further their understanding of what takes place within the change process during cognitive psychotherapy; and conversely, cognitive therapy’s description of the maintenance of emotional disorders can contribute to Husserl’s own account of the natural attitude. That is, that the natural attitude consists of a universalising attitude which is fundamental to the natural attitude per se. The thesis develops this argument further, by examining the theoretical underpinnings within cognitive therapy and extrapolating what appears as the incidental, yet significant, phenomenological structures within cognitive therapy’s clinical interventions. The thesis uses the identified phenomenological structures within cognitive therapy’s treatment of emotional disorder to firstly, further develop the phenomenological description of the universalising attitude as a subset to the natural attitude which, it is argued disguises or presents itself as the ‘genuine natural attitude’. Secondly, the concept of the universalising attitude is developed further to suggest a hierarchy of attitudes within the natural attitude.

As posthumanism has developed in the last twenty-five years there has been hesitation in elucidating a robust posthumanist engagement with the body. My thesis redresses this gap in the literature in three intertwined ways. First, it is a critical assessment of posthumanism broadly, focusing on how the body is read in its discourse and how there is a continuation of a humanist telos in terms which revolve around the body. Second, it is a philosophical interrogation, adaptation, and transformation of aspects of the work of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, focusing its reading on Phenomenology of Perception and The Visible and the Invisible, with additional material drawn from his works on language, aesthetics, and ontology. Third, it is a critical analysis of four films drawn from that seemingly most posthumanist of genres, science fiction: Cronenberg's eXistenZ, Spielberg's A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, Rusnak's The Thirteenth Floor, and Oshii's Ghost in the Shell. Science fiction is the meeting place of popular and critical posthumanist imaginaries as the vast majority of texts on posthumanism (in whatever form) ground their analyses in a science fiction of some kind. By reading posthumanism through the work of Merleau-Ponty I outline a posthumanist ontology of corporeality which both demonstrates the limitations of how posthumanism has done its analyses of the body and elucidates an opening and levelling not adequately considered in posthumanist analyses of the body. Following Merleau-Ponty I argue that there is a ‘belongingness of the body to being and the corporeal relevance of every being’, yet, the body is not the singular purview of the human. There are alternative embodiments and bodies which have been previously overlooked and that all bodies (be they embodied organically, technologically, virtually or otherwise) are corporeal.

Il s’agit pour partie d’un travail historique consacré à l’introduction de la phénoménologie en France, et au rôle qu’ont pu jouer à cet égard Levinas, Sartre et Ricœur. Le contexte de cette introduction est étudié pour faire ressortir l’unité d’un moment philosophique, celui d’une phénoménologie lue à l’aune d’une réception concomitante, celle de Kierkegaard. C’est ainsi que Levinas, Sartre et Ricœur se retrouvent dans le problème formulé par Camus, celui d’un insensé oblitérant l’action de l’homme dans le monde. Il s’agit donc pour une autre part de rendre compte de l’usage de la phénoménologie pour élucider les modes de l’agir humain. Il s’ensuit à la fois un cadre conceptuel partagé, autour des notions de contingence et de transcendance, et une démarche qui vise à épouser les contours du drame que l’insensé fait subir au sujet agissant. Mise à profit dans des directions variées, et souvent antagoniques, la phénoménologie guide à cette occasion une défense de la subjectivité par la mise en question de la subjectivité, avant d’ouvrir la voie à l’élucidation d’un ultime pouvoir du sujet, la narrativité. / This work is partly devoted to trace the history of the introduction of phenomenology in France and to investigate the role that Levinas, Sartre and Ricœur have played in it. The context of this introduction is studied with the aim of underlining the unity of a philosophical moment, the one of a phenomenology that is understood through the concomitant reception of Kierkegaard. In this context, Levinas, Sartre and Ricœur share the problem that was formulated by Camus, the meaninglessness that obliterates the action of man in the world. Therefore, this work is also devoted to set out the use of phenomenology that is intended to elucidate the modes of human action. It follows that they share a same conceptual framework, structured by the ideas of contingency and transcendence, and a same approach that intends to keep pace with the drama that the meaninglessness makes the acting subject play. Exploited in different and often antagonistic directions, the phenomenology guides a defense of subjectivity that proceeds with the questioning of subjectivity, until the elucidation of a last power of subject, the narrativity.

Through practice-led research this thesis will explore the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subject through real-time video performance practice. It challenges the assumption that the digital video image is merely or simply other to the subject and aims to re-position the 'other' as an integral part of self where we perform the other. It does this by drawing on Jacques Lacan's Mirror Stage and claims that through digital performance we can suspend divisions between the self and the digital other. By being immersed within the real-time video image the thesis argues we re-enter the Mirror Stage and become captivated within the digital counterpart. Through a disruption in the proprioception of the body there is a crossover of the actual self and digital other which are suspended in each other. Through the use of Head Mounted Display Systems in the work In[bodi]lmental it is claimed that the actual body can In[body] the other subject as part of self. The thesis argues that the digital other is a component of self mediated through new digital technologies to be understood as an augmented self. Therefore it is through an In[bodied] Mirror Stage we momentarily access the loss of the Lacanian real encountered through the uncanny experience. This investigation has been conducted in the form of four digital performance projects defined as Inter-Reactive Explorations I-REs (i-iv).The I-REs were subjected to critical analysis and reflection using a variety of disciplines including: psychoanalysis, philosophy, the study of perception, phenomenology, and ethnography. The methodological framework for this research has been coined 'auto-ethnophenomenology'; a mixed-method approach utilizing auto-ethnography and the phenomenological lived experiences of informants. This model has enabled both the 'I' of the researcher and the other to be equally represented from both first person and third person perspectives. The symbiotic relationship between the theory and the practice is exemplified through the phenomenology of interactions between the digital 'other', and the lived experience of the subjects supported by the writings of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Drew Leder and Rane Willerslev.