Embracing the Cruel Optimism of Phenomenological Writing

The Cruel Optimism of the Wisps

As I mentioned above, the idea that will never be written has not completely shut down my life over these past 6 years, but it has definitely hindered the aim that brought me to it originally. This attachment feels optimistic because of the enraptured, creative experiences I have when writing the idea. It becomes a cruel optimism because of all I have let go of or put on hold to keep attempting to write it. For 6 years. All with the hope that change is gonna come, and I will end up with a published piece about something related to philosophically informed phenomenological research.

Thus, I have found it both beneficial and productive recently to think about the optimistic part of this attachment as these mystical encounters with the will o’ the wisps—like those little blue ones in the movie Brave. I had never thought about the will o’ the wisps outside of the context of Brave, because, well, honestly, I try not to spend too much time drawing on anything produced by Disney to think with (other than critique, of course). My daughter and I watched Brave a few (dozen) times, and the will o’ the wisps kept cropping up in my thinking, especially in relation to ideas for this current paper. ⁶ In Brave, Merida, the lively, subversive daughter of a Scottish queen and king, encounters the will o’ the wisps in the forest one day. Until this moment Merida has only known the wisps as Scottish lore. But when she encounters them in the forest she realizes they are indeed real and quite magical.

If you have not seen Brave, the wisps are portrayed as these translucent blue, mystical entities that appear and disappear with the blink of an eye (and they make these cool little ethereal noises). The wisps only appear when Merida is not looking for them, and each time they appear they illuminate some kind of path leading Merida into the unknown. If she tries to catch the wisps, they disappear. Some Scottish lore says that the will o’ the wisps are mischievous spirits of the dead, or fairy-like spirits, which lead random travelers off the beaten path (Shandraw, 2012). Other lore says that on certain days these magical flickering lights will suddenly appear to certain travelers around the world. ⁷ Curious and unsuspecting, the travelers become

mesmerized by their whispers, their promises. Yet no matter how long or how fervently they follow, they never quite touch the beautiful beacons whose flickering lights eventually fade and disappear . . . leaving the inquisitors, the dreamers and the treasure seekers lost . . . and alone. (Shandraw, 2012, para. 5)

I like to think about the wisps as the inspiration we sometimes encounter when we are lost in the writing: appearing when we least expect them, flickering with hope, leading us toward some unknown possibility. That is one way I imagine them, anyway. When it comes to the idea that will never be written, I envision them as these mischievous, mystical entities that appear out of nowhere mesmerizing me with their flickering lights and clusters of possibility. No matter how loyal I am to following them, they disappear just as quickly as they come, leaving me lost and alone. Yet, I still feel the need to follow them every time they show up. According to Berlant, this is what the operation of optimism is as an affective form: having that intense need to return to the scene (again and again), where the object hovers in its potentialities. In other words, no matter how many times the wisps appear, taunting me with their clusters of possibility before they disappear, I will follow them. This is not only because I want the published paper to feel academically legit ⁸ but it is also because I yearn to whirl with words and dance in the ecstatic circle of love surrounded by the evocative and provocative ideas that write themselves onto the page (hooks, 2000, p. 8).

It feels useful, then, for me to continue holding these two desires together in tension, as one cruel optimistic attachment. By doing so, this bundled cluster of possibilities gets me something I could not have otherwise had: motivation to keep on keepin’ on. In other words, neither one of these desires is going to suddenly dissolve on its own because they both get me something. Bundled together, they each promise me something different related to my fantasy of the good life. Berlant suggests that by phrasing our “object of desire” as a “cluster of promises is to allow us to encounter what’s incoherent or enigmatic in our attachments, not as confirmation of our irrationality but as an explanation of our sense of our endurance in the object” (pp. 23-24). This is because “proximity to the object means proximity to the cluster of things that the object promises . . .” (pp. 23-24). Below I draw on one example from my dozens of attempts to write the idea that will never be written, to think through how we (meaning I) sometimes make affective bargains—even if unconscious—to keep ourselves in proximity to the scenes/objects of our desire (Berlant, 2011). This example is meant to illustrate my on-going bargaining, my own sense of endurance in my object of desire, insofar as proximity to the idea that will never be written in any way, shape, or form meant proximity to the bundled cluster of promises attached to it.

In optimism, the subject leans toward promises contained within the present moment of the encounter with her object. (Berlant, 2011, p. 24)

During summer 2017, colleagues who were co-editing a special issue for Qualitative Inquiry sent me the call and invited me to submit an abstract.

This special issue seeks to reimagine the craft of phenomenological and hermeneutic

inquiry. Given that these methodological traditions bear the same name and

commitments as the ontologies from which they emanate, this issue is equally interested

in exploring the complicated ways in which ontology and methodology are bound up with

one another.

OK, I thought, this must be the universe’s way of opening up a deliberate space for me to finally write this blasted paper. I mean, it is an entire issue devoted to different ways of thinking about philosophical phenomenology! I had been reading Schues, Olkowski, and Fielding’s (2011) Time in Feminist Phenomenology to help me think differently about time in neoliberal education for another project, and I decided that instead of writing the idea that will never be written, I would write an entirely different paper for this special issue. A new idea. A fresh phenomenological perspective. Put the old idea to rest: It does not want to be written anyway because it obviously died with the dissertation. This, I understand now, was indeed an affective bargain I was unconsciously making to keep myself in proximity to the scene/object of my desire (the euphoric experiences when writing the idea, and the hope of a published piece to then feel legit enough). Of course, because it was an unconscious affective bargain I was making, I thought I was doing pretty well to move on for real this time (wink, wink).

Weeks passed, along with several attempts at writing the new paper about neoliberal time in feminist phenomenology, and eventually I realized I was not ready to write that paper. I had not read enough and I did not have the confidence to write through that idea yet. Recognizing this, but not knowing where to go next, I decided to do some reading to get my creative juices flowing. I started with Heidegger (1971) because he always seems to help me get my head back in the phenomenological game, so-to-speak. I reread some van Manen (2014), because his ideas and philosophical tracings always inspire me. And I reread Vagle’s (2014) ideas about postintentional phenomenology, because how he brings poststructural thought to bear on phenomenology always intrigues me. As I read and reread, ideas started to flicker: The wisps were not right in front of me, blinding me with their inspirational and creative lights but they were somewhere near, and I could feel them getting closer. Knowing if I tried to chase them down they would disappear, I gave myself over to the texts I was reading to see what would happen. Walk-and-read after walk-and-read, I jotted down notes about Heidegger (1971) and his thoughts about language. I revisited Sartre’s (1948/1950) reminder that writing is a form of acting in the world. I thought back to the call for the special issue on phenomenology and the editors’ request for papers about how methodology and ontology are entangled. I knew something was there, something was resonating with that call and what I was reading. I could feel it percolating in my body, but I was not sure what it was. And then one day I did.

The wisps suddenly appeared when I was writing through what I had been reading, and they were flickering so brightly I almost could not write fast enough to keep up. According to Heidegger (1927/1962), we should always be asking what it is philosophy can do with us, rather than what we can do with it. Without going into an entire dissertation about this idea (because I did that in 2011), to take up the philosophy of phenomenology, for me, is to exist differently in the world: through a more thoughtful attunement to everyday goings-on that we might otherwise take for granted. To live, to be in the world phenomenologically, is to live in wonder, in curiosity. Living in wonder, suggested Heidegger, is a disposition that has a dis-positional effect: It dis-locates and dis-places our taken-for-granted understanding of the world (van Manen, 2018). Existing this way, more possibilities open up for us to (re)notice phenomena that have been normalized or buried over or covered up. This kind of covering-up as a disguising, wrote Heidegger, is “both the most frequent and the most dangerous, for here the possibilities of deceiving and misleading are especially stubborn” (p. 60). Even though sometimes phenomena are bound up so constructively within different structures, they present themselves as something “clear”—requiring no further justification. (p. 60).

These were the ideas that the wisps always seemed to inspire me to dance with on the page. As I wrote my way through them on that particular day, I felt it throughout my body that this was the paper. It felt new, but it was not new. It was the idea that would never be written, but a totally different paper, all in one. I wrote what felt like dozens of pages about the ideas that were swirling. (It was actually just over two pages, single-spaced, but it feels like a novel sometimes when you’re in it, you know?) It felt so amazing, so hopeful, so possible. The wisps were burning brightly and the good life was in my reach: this was the paper, and I was going to pump out the entire thing that day, I was sure of it! And then the doorbell rang. (Yes, I’m serious.) I remember it as if it is happening now as I type these words. I had my phone on “do not disturb,” I was not checking email, and the words were leaping out of my fingers onto the page. I had all the things. And the $%#& doorbell rang. I did not have to answer it (and I know now to never ever to answer it again). But that day I did. I opened the door to see two really sweet Mormon sisters standing in front of me. They introduced themselves and their purpose for stopping by (at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday) and asked if I would be interested in having them come in to talk to me about whatever they were talking about. I remember exactly what they were wearing, their skin, their eyes, their hair. As they talked, however, I only saw their mouths moving. I could not hear what they were saying because I kept thinking, OMG, OMG, OMG, I answered the effing door! Why did I answer the door? I politely explained that I was terribly busy, thanked the sisters for stopping by, closed the door, and bolted back over to the computer to reengage the wisps.

Darkness

Not the computer screen. The wisps. The flickering lights had faded. Again. Frantic, I read the two and half pages of text I had written and thought, Well what the hell was that supposed to be? And that question quickly spiraled into other (quite unproductive) questions, such as: What do I do now? Why did I answer the door? What if that was the last time I ever get the opportunity to write this idea? What if I NEVER publish this stupid-useless-nobody-gives-a-shit-about-this-idea-anyway paper?

What is cruel about the attachments we have to certain objects/scenes of desire, according to Berlant (2011), is that we who have X in our lives think we will not persevere through the loss of those objects/scenes of desire, even though their presence consumes or threatens our well-being. Berlant suggests this is because whatever the content of the attachment is, the continuity of its form provides something of the continuity of our sense of what it means to keep functioning in life (p. 24). In other words, sometimes we might not be able to let go of an attachment—even if it is unhealthy for us to have this attachment (e.g., being in an abusive relationship, returning to some kind of food as a vice, or perhaps less extreme, continuing to try to write an idea that does not want to be written), because the very idea of that attachment’s consistent existence as a possibility in our lives provides us with some kind of consistent sense of hope to keep moving forward.

Feeling like I would not persevere through the loss of (yet again) attempting to write the idea, I desperately tried to rekindle the flame. I searched for a few of the older iterations of papers I had written about the idea and, defeated and depleted, decided I would simply compile chunks of all the papers into one. I would force all of those years of attempts to exist together in one space and see what that got me. I sifted through at least half a dozen versions of the idea, copying favorite chunks and pasting them into a new document. Screw the wisps. This was happening. What was actually happening, however, was that my attachment to the idea that will never be written was impeding my original aim of writing that paper. I could not recognize it though because of the fantasy that I wanted so badly to become a reality. Berlant describes fantasy as the “means by which people hoard idealizing theories . . . about how they and the world ‘add up to something’” (p. 2). She questions, however, what happens when our fantasies “start to fray—depression, dissociation, pragmatism, cynicism, optimism, activism, or an incoherent mash?” (p. 2). As my own fantasy began to fray, an incoherent mash indeed settled upon my computer.

As I combined favorite paragraphs from different iterations together on the page, I noticed how analogies and metaphors started appearing one after the other. Reading those ideas together, I eventually noticed (by identifying the themes across all the excerpts like a good qualitative researcher) that in every iteration, I felt the need to explain and/or defend phenomenology, even when that was not the intended purpose of the paper. If the paper was supposed to be about writing as the method in phenomenology, or the incredible uncertainties conducting phenomenological research brings forth, before I could get to those key points, I apparently felt the need to phenom-splain ⁹ to those who either take up phenomenology with little more than a cursory borrowing of its terms, or those who critique its philosophy in limited ways.

Acknowledging this new discovery and deciding I would write that paper, I finally felt a sense of satisfaction running through my veins. (Of course I did. I was doing all I could to keep myself in close proximity to what my object of desire promised me: the good life.) Thus, I continued living in this reluctance to foreclose the possibility of writing the idea, because even if it did not get me this paper, it would get me something: euphoric writing experiences, possibly another paper, something. I was sure of it. (Again.) Maybe this is the moment where the universe shifts in my favor, I told myself. Maybe this was the fanfiction moment in Brave where Merida actually captured one of the wisps and something magical unfolded—other than an adventure with her mother (spoiler alert!) turning into a bear. ¹⁰ Feeling somewhat confident, I sat down and pounded out an introduction. And then another introduction. And then another introduction. A few days later I had roughly 15 pages of solid introductions. The excerpt from the introduction below, for example, was the first of the three I wrote with my new found sense of possibility as my fantasy continued to fray into an incoherent mash:

Recently I was working on a floor puzzle with my 3 year old. It was called “traffic jam” and had several different modes of transportation that were apparently meant to exist together in some random space and moment in time—a plane, a bus, an ambulance, a taxi cab, a fire engine, all jammed together in one section of a city—at least for the purposes of this puzzle, it was possible. It felt awkward to me to work on this disillusioned puzzle but it was also effective, because the specific vehicles allowed me to help my daughter think about each piece’s place within the puzzle as a whole. We’d zoom in and focus on a specific vehicle and talk about what colors and patterns that vehicle had so we could look for those pieces, and then we’d zoom back out to look at the bigger picture. Back and forth, in and out, a thoughtful attunement to the parts-whole-parts of the puzzle. A few times my daughter grew frustrated because, on their own, when they were lying on the floor separated from the overall puzzle, some of the pieces seemed like they should fit in a certain space: the colors and patterns were similar enough to that vehicle, and the shape of the piece—on first glance—might have seemed similar enough to the empty space. But when she attempted to place those pieces in those empty spaces they didn’t fit. As her puzzling patience slowly dwindled, my daughter finally left one of the pieces in a space that clearly wasn’t its match. “That piece fits, mommy,” she said through feigned certainty. “What’s next?”

I realized a few things shortly after that moment: (a) my kid was over not “getting it” and was ready to move on, even if it took her forcing something that clearly didn’t belong—and either pretended to be alright with that, or actually did not understand enough about it to know the difference (though, I’m pretty sure in this case it was the latter). And (b) I had just lived an analogy I’ve written/thought about for almost a decade regarding phenomenology. That realization was almost as awkward as being OK with all of those vehicles trying to exist together on one tiny stretch of highway. Perhaps the most important realization I had that day, however, was revisiting my deep yearning to write this paper. A paper where I sort of talk back to the ways in which phenomenology has been misinterpreted, misunderstood, and/or misappropriated in some social science spaces.

I have always wondered why I feel the need to defend or explain phenomenology, and that experience puzzling with my daughter reminded me that it’s because phenomenology is, more often than not, misinterpreted in so many different ways in social science research. Interestingly enough, how I used to write about people’s misappropriation of phenomenology was to liken it to misfit puzzle pieces hastily gathered and awkwardly inserted into a jigsaw puzzle that is missing pieces. I mean wouldn’t that feel awkward? Imagine you are working on this really cool 1,000 piece dinosaur puzzle and realize that the box is missing a handful of pieces. Not knowing how to complete the puzzle due to its missing pieces, you decide to go and grab some other pieces from the 1,000 piece motorcycle puzzle in the closet to plug in the holes of your really cool—albeit incomplete—dinosaur puzzle. This now leaves you with nothing more than the front fork of a motorcycle where the Velociraptor’s 3.5 inch retractable claw should be and a motorcycle’s instrument panel where the Velociraptor’s feathery little quill knobs should be. Awkward.

Puzzling that day with my daughter added another amalgamated layer to this on-going puzzling analogy that seems to lurk on all of my Word documents: even when working with the same puzzle, some pieces will never fit if you aren’t doing the difficult and thoughtful work to see the bigger (philosophical) picture. Rather than reimagining the craft of phenomenological inquiry for this special issue, then, what I hope to add is a (reminder? a perspective? an argument?) that I’ve never known the phenomenologies I read any other way than always, already entangling ontology and methodology. This exploration isn’t meant to be radical or even transformational. Nor is it meant to turn qualitative inquiry on its head by offering some mind-blowing new ideas (because, like others, I’m not sure there are actually any “new” ideas to be had). Rather, it’s meant to offer a few (possibly different, possibly not) perspectives to those who have only learned about phenomenology through introductory qualitative methods texts; or to those who seem to think there is only one phenomenology—a Husserlian phenomenology of essences and reductions. Perhaps this paper will be/become nothing more than a theoretical rant. Or perhaps it will be/become a phenomenology of my experiences with phenomenology’s mishaps over the last decade.

Nothing magical or maddening took place during or after writing that introduction. No wisps leading me to inspiration; no doorbells interrupting the flow. The writing was simply not getting me anywhere, beyond enacting the very puzzle metaphor I was using to critique the ways in which phenomenology is sometimes misrepresented. Just like those who drop phenomenological terms into in their methods sections that do not fit with their overall methodology, I too was trying to force pieces of my phenomenological writing together that did not fit. I kept charging forward though, because I wanted the fantasy to be real; I needed the fantasy to be real, to move on in my writerly, academic life. Berlant (2011) posits that “object loss appears to entail the loss of an entire world and therefore a loss of confidence about how to live on, even at the microlevel of bodily comportment” (p. 16). Living in fear of forever losing my connection to the wisps felt very real in those moments. And even though it may not have resonated in those particular moments, the possibility of not producing a published piece about the idea that will never be written chiseled away at my confidence as a legitimized scholar.

Thus, more reading, more writing, more experimenting to produce something. I attempted a few more versions where I played with multiple genres—dictionary entries, vignettes, found poems, even Bitmojis. I leaned on Caputo (1988) to write a confession about my love for phenomenology. I called on van Manen (2002) to help me describe how phenomenological writing most times feels like writing in the dark; and even more, how finding oneself in those moments is part of what it means to be in the world phenomenologically. With all of these attempts came beautiful, creative writing experiences—tantalizing wisps appearing one after the other—leading me in entirely different directions to, well, nowhere beyond a few more introductions. And the wheels on the bus go round and round . . .

Concluding Thoughts

So here’s the thing: In general, publishing in academia is not all it is cracked up to be. For the most part, it is stressful and inauthentic and the whole thing seems like an antiquated process. Even more, you have to embody some strong-ass armor for some of the reviews others feel the need to bestow upon you. But writing? Engaging in the act of writing is a different story. For me, writing is everything it is cracked up to be. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises, so many insights (Lamott, 1994). The actual act of writing turns out to be the best part for me. “It’s like discovering that while you thought you needed the tea ceremony for the caffeine, what you really needed was the tea ceremony. The act of writing turns out to be its own reward” (Lamott, 1994, p. xxvi).

Epilogue

Meeting Vietnamese Buddhist monk and activist Thich Nhat Hanh for the first time, George Yancy and bell hooks (2015) described how all she could talk to Hanh about when she arrived to their meeting was how angry she was. hooks felt like she had encountered some kind of racism or sexism all along the way to their meeting, so the first thing that came out of her mouth was, “I am so angry!” Hanh suggested hooks hold onto her anger and use it as compost for her garden. Putting Hanh’s concept to work, hooks noted,

. . . [I]f we think of anger as compost, we think of it as energy that can be recycled in the direction of our good. It is an empowering force. If we don’t think about it that way, it becomes a debilitating and destructive force. (Yancy & hooks, 2015, para. 26)

What if we, too, took up Hanh’s concept and put that to work on all those ideas that never want to be published? Rather than festering about what we cannot produce within this epoch of self-audit and self-surveillance, we might instead use those ideas that will never be published as compost for our gardens of inspiration: for ideas yet to come, courses yet to be taught, and future papers yet to be written. Even more, we could use that compost to begin creating new and different kinds of legitimizing practices in the academy.

You write and you write, and you read, and you write some more. Sometimes you publish something from those experiences. And other times you recognize that a particular idea might want to be written but does not want to be published. Instead of having this realization become a debilitating and destructive force in your life, you can instead remind yourself that you have indeed been thoughtfully engaging with that idea for months (or years), thus giving you just as much scholarly legitimacy to share it as a published piece would. And if you happen to belabor that idea for weeks (or months or years) on the written page, rather than ruminating on the attachment you have formed to that particular idea, rather than seeing it as a symptom of your error, a perversion, or some dark truth (Berlant, 2011), you might (re)position it as a scene of negotiated sustenance that makes life in the neoliberal university a little more bearable. At the end of the day, all academics are expected to publish. But not all academics see themselves as writers. As someone who does see herself as a writer and an academic, I have remind myself that writing to fulfill the demands of the entrepreneurial institution gets me something very different than the writing that emerges from my constant desire to engage with words. Even when there might not be any clear benefit or reward, it is the experience of writing that matters (hooks, 2000).