Decolonising the Self: Phenomenological Strategies

From a practical point of view, phenomenological research strategies train us progressively to let go of the presuppositions, inherited category or naming systems, desires, and expectations which we inevitably bring with us into any research process and which therefore obscure core phenomenological priorities: (a) the unfolding but generally unnoticed or ignored self-showings, or self-presentations, of the phenomena with which we are concerned as researchers, and, furthermore (b) the capacities of such self-showings to re-position, indeed radically reconfigure both researcher and research context. To embrace investigative processes of this kind, however, means entering a territory that may be experienced as decidedly and paradoxically unscholarly. An initial phenomenological challenge, for instance, is to engage in situated, perceptual and pre-critical processes of describing in which the desire to ‘explain’ is temporarily suspended, and in which the usual academic structures and conventions according to which we ask questions and organise ideas need to be held very loosely.