Finally I read a text I have planned to read for a while – there are many of them lying around on my computer desktop and various files – a text on posthuman phenomenology by Tyson Lewis and James Owen, published already 2019 in Qualitative Inquiry. Although I was very much inspired by Merleau-Ponty when working on my doctoral dissertation Performance as Space in the 1990’s phenomenology has not been my focus since then. It is nevertheless central for many of my colleagues, especially those working with dance and somatic practices, and therefore posthumanism related to phenomenology immediately incited my curiosity. Interestingly, the authors suggest that their approach could be understood as a branch of performance philosophy. “To press the phenomenological tradition beyond its humanist roots, one must commit a radical reorganization of the body and of sensation, and the best way to accomplish this is through the esthetic reinvention of one’s own bodily apparatus.” (p 2)
 
The subtitles describe the main trajectory of the text: Unsettling the Human-Centeredness of Phenomenology, From Imaginative Speculation to Embodied Entanglements, Performing the Posthuman, Posthuman Performance: A Case Study, and Conclusion: Toward the Landscape. What is not so evident by the subtitles is the importance of Jakob van Uexküll’s idea of Umwelt and various ‘life bubbles’ for their argument. Uexküll uses an oak tree to exemplify how the same object can have different perceptual “tones” (Uexküll 2010, 129). For a fox living in a hollow at the base of the tree “the oak possesses neither the use tone from the forester’s environment nor the danger tone from the little girl’s environment, but only a protection tone” (Ibid). Rather, “in accordance with the different effect tones, the perception images of the numerous inhabitants of the oak are configured differently” (Uexküll 2010, 130).
 
The authors describe various imaginative experiments based on Uexküll’s ideas before introducing experiments in embodiment, arguing that “a more efficacious starting point for a posthuman phenomenology of the non-human animal can be found in performance philosophy.” (p 4) They suggest that “through embodied imitation of non-human animals, the body can begin to think differently.” (p 5) This they exemplify with some experiments by Charles Foster, who tried to live like a badger and develop his fingertips to sense somewhat like the whiskers of an otter. After discussing the ethical problems in such experiments they refer to Merleau-Ponty and note how “there is always already a chiasmic intertwining of self and other in all forms of touching” (Merleau-Ponty 1968 143), and “in this touching the human cannot remain untouched, producing an intercapture through mimetic performance.” (p 6) For the authors “there is an interface that enables bubbles to cohabitate and potentially touch one another” and which “is revealed through performance”, a “necessary, shared commonwealth between worlds that make such touching possible”, a shared interface they call landscape. (Ibid) They write: “The landscape is not reducible to any given world (any given bubble) or to a form of subjective intelligence but is, to use phenomenological language, the clearing that enables bubbles to appear and potentially touch/contaminate one another. Without the attempt to perform (rather than to merely imagine), posthuman phenomenology would not have succeeded in exposing this realm that exists alongside our worlds but is not reducible to worlds.” (Lewis & Owen 2019, 6)
 
The idea of performing as a way of exploring through imitation is closer to theatre and performance groups like Other Spaces and not at all what I have been trying to do. Or perhaps there is something related in my attempt at remaining still with trees or shrubs, breathing together with them, sharing their relative immobility in some manner. Landscape as a common ground for various life-worlds or bubbles resonates better with my aspirations, I guess. I’m also reminded of Emanuele Coccia’s claim that there are no separate niches or life-worlds, because we are immersed in the worlds of others. “Being in the world means to exercise influence especially outside one’s own space, outside one’s own habitat, outside one’s own niche.” (Coccia 2019, 43) According to him, “the world is by definition the life of others: the ensemble of other living beings”.(Ibid) And yes, we are breathing in the air others are breathing out. Following Lewis and Owen we could ask, however, how could we understand those others. And as they suggest, besides trying to imagine, we can also try to do something, not necessarily to imitate but to perform in some manner.
 
 
 
Tyson E. Lewis and James Owen. 2019. Posthuman Phenomenologies: Performance Philosophy, Non-Human Animals, and the Landscape. Qualitative Inquiry Volume 26 issue 5, p 1 –7.
 
Coccia, Emanuele. 2019. The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture. Cambridge: Polity Press.
 
Texts referenced by Lewis and Owen:
Foster, C. (2016). Being a beast: Adventures across the species divide. New York, NY: Metropolitan Books.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The visible and the invisible (A. Lingis, Trans.) Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Uexküll, J. (2010). A foray into the worlds of animals: With a theory of meaning. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.