Phenomenologies of Practice

Abstract

In the field of art and technology engagement with virtual worlds as spaces for creative practice challenges and enhances our understanding of the phenomena of imagining. The experience of creating in technology-mediated spaces through an avatar form brings the phenomenological experience of the body into the act of creating itself. Ways of explaining this creative process and its relationship to imaginative experience highlights a phenomenology of practice of artists working in this realm. This article considers the implications of this methodological approach and presents the case for investigating artistic and imaginative experience through adapting phenomenological research methods.

BODIES AGAINST MODERNITY: Politics of Slum Rehabilitations in India

“…Liberal democratic policies, such as the SRP, have historically been justified through liberal social contract theory, which imagines a polity within the territorial jurisdiction of the nation‐state as a social body governed by state law acting as the governing head of the polity (Doyle, 2001). Derived from John Locke's liberal political thought, the idea of the citizen‐subject electing governments to make decisions on citizens’ behalf was instituted in India through the nation‐building processes that ensued from India's independence struggle (Bayly, 2012).…”

“…Yet, in seeking to claim individual liberty, John Locke argued that the state must seek its polity's consent while governing it (Chattopadhyay, 2012; Davy, 2012). In either case, the state in social contract theories was seen as a body in which the head of the state governed the polity (Doyle, 2001). In India's nation‐building efforts, these social contract justifications were weighed against a precolonial hierarchical caste‐based and gender‐based social order often referred to as the ‘Brahmanical patriarchy’ (Chakravarti, 1993).…”

“…Fragmented politics is a reality many residents experience in everyday life, even though the normative ideals of a unified body politic persist in the imaginations of the people and the state. In seeking to respond to exactly this dilemma, gender‐ and caste‐focused political and sociological thought has deconstructed the idea of the modern body politic (hierarchical, consensual or liberal) by challenging the very mind–body binary that sustains it, both in the West and in India (Doyle, 2001; Meynell, 2009; Guru, 2011; Piran, 2017; Guru and Sarukkai, 2019). On the one hand, based on Foucauldian theories of discipline and power, bodies themselves are shown to be the subjects of disciplinary societal regimes, be they sanctioned by the state, other institutions or discourses (Butler, 1990; Heath, 2018).…”

“…On the one hand, based on Foucauldian theories of discipline and power, bodies themselves are shown to be the subjects of disciplinary societal regimes, be they sanctioned by the state, other institutions or discourses (Butler, 1990; Heath, 2018). On the other hand, a focus on the body's agency reveals that bodies also resist and challenge dominant disciplinary regimes (Doyle, 2001; Thapan, 2009; Snell‐Rood, 2015; Ebila and Tripp, 2017). In fact, the conceptual use of ‘embodiment’ has become prevalent in urban theory, whether to critique real‐estate developments (Dharia, 2021) or demonstrate the making of emotions, affect and political subjectivities in the urban (Doshi, 2016).…”