Page 246 - Contribution To Phenomenology

ETHNIC STUDIES AS MULTI-DISCIPLINE 239

phenomenological whether or not the researchers consider themselves
phenomenologists. This means that a great deal of social science has always
been phenomenological, doesn't it? Yes, and, while much of what a
phenomenologist may assert will be familiar because akeady explicit or
implicit in, say, sociology, we think it useful to try to pursue not only an
explicit but also a comprehensive and systematic presentation. This may
help get some distortions and exclusions recognized and corrected. For
example, negatively speaking, there has been, for generations, a great
deal of interpretationism and naturalism in cultural science. Interpreta-
tion and language are played up by these tendencies, even though the
bulk of our lives and interactions, even for intellectuals, is non-linguistic
and, unless "interpretation" is broadened beyond recognition, non-interpre-
tive. Stand back and look at the big picture and one can see, positively,
that the valuing and willing by virtue of which we have cultural objects
is neither linguistic nor interpretive. It is often heard that cultural objects
are meaningful, but is this "meaning" as in the meaning of a word? Is
encountering a chair as something on which to sit always and only merely
the interpreting of a physical thing?
In worrying about the big picture, one needs to worry also about the
crucial distinctions within it. Thus, how objects (which are not just focal
objects but also situations and indeed cultural worlds) present themselves
and, correlatively, how subjects are intentive to such objects can both be
analyzed and discussed in terms of awareness (perception, recollection,
expectation, eideation, pictorial, indicational, and linguistic representation,
etc.) and what Husserl calls positionality (positive, negative, and neutral
beUeving, valuing, willing, and objects as intrinsically and extrinsically
believed in, valued, and willed). Although my stress is on the distinction
between perceiving or willing, on the one hand, and the object as
perceived or as willed (its sometimes called the "ing/ed" distinction), on
the other, might be considered unusual, I am using these expressions in
close to the ordinary significations.
Members of ethnic groups in conflict might believe that those of the
other groups are unclean and immoral and hate them. Or, they might
believe the others are supra-moral and meta-hygienic and envy them but
avoid them out of shame. I hadn't thought of that, but it fits. And this
is not a matter of something that, in one signification, might be called
"objective," such as emumerations of how many baths are taken per
capita per week or how many bars of soap one used, but rather what
*Sve" believe (and value, and will, and are aware of) about "them." Or,