barebones communication

Well, you will be surprised. I was.

Up till a month ago I had no idea that Edmund Husserl has written much about images. Not to speak about photography. Until I had a closer look in my bookcase and found this book: Edmund Husserl: Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerungen, herausgeben von Eduard Marbach, Husserliana Band XXIII, Martinus Nijhoff, 1980. 

I am ashamed that I have to admit that I have had this book since April 22, 1980. On the other hand it might have gained considerably in value since it is still in mint condition. I paid Deutsche Mark 255,00 for it at that time. And that is a small fortune. It is a brick on 724 pages written with an obscure philosophical pen. Husserl’s pen. The major parts of it about 100 years back. Don’t let that disturb you.

The good thing is, that is was translated (yes, it was) by John B. Brough in 2005 and published in a paperback edition by German publisher Springer. Goes by the title: Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898 -1925). And it comes at a much better price. It’s a good read.

What is even better is that the book is absolutely amazing for anyone that intents to dig into the ontology and images and photography. So, it you plan to have a career as a university professor, or simply settle for a Ph.D., or have an interest in the arts in general, you should simply start with this book. It leaves Roland Barthes and Susan Sonntag in the back row. And it does so in a couple of pages into the book.

You should move NOW, since this book and this branch of research have hardly picked up yet. But it will. You could really take the drivers seat for a while even if it will probably leave you with a 700+ pages headache. That will pass over time.

You don’t have to thank me for this recommendation now. You can pay me later. When I loaded both books to Library Thing a little while ago it turned out that I, so far, am the only one that have pointed to these books. And there are tons of books in there already. So the show is yours for the taking.

And as I said. You can pay me later, but if you are into this areas either as a researcher, student or just out of plain interest: GO FOR IT. I will - with some delay

You will find the precise references to both the original version from 1980, and to the translation from 2005 by following the links. Both ways you are in for a brick of pages. 

NB: When you are done with Husserl’s theory on images and photographs you could always send me a quick word as to why the image below might have a certain phenomenological affinity And, add a bit of semiological and gestalt psychological analysis while you are at it.

Good luck with both the books, and the picture. 

All rights reserved.

Buy the English translation of Husserl’s work. Follow the link and support the site:
Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory (1898-1925) (Husserliana: Edmund Husserl Collected Works)

Shot at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark 2008. Exhibition by Candice Breitz. 

“This means that what affects us from the current passively pregiven background is not a completely empty something, some datum or other (we have no really exact word for it) as yet entirely without sense, a datum absolutely unfamiliar to us. On the contrary, unfamiliarity is at the same time always a mode of familiarity.”

Edmund Husserl: Experience and Judgment,  revised and edited by Ludwig Landgrebe, translated by James S. Churchill and Karl Ameriks, Routledge & Kegan Paul,London, UK 1973, page 37.

Library Thing.  

More on pitstops.

 Photograph shot by the blog author.

“Our first outlook upon life is that of natural human beings, imaging, judging, feeling, willing, “from the natural standpoint“. Let us make clear to ourselves what this means in the form of simple meditations which we can best carry on in the first person. I am aware of a world, spread out in space endlessly, and in time becoming and become, without end. I am aware of it, that means, first of all, I discover it immediately, intuitively, I experience it. Through sight, touch, hearing, etc., in the different ways of sensory perception, corporeal things somewhat spatially distributed are for me simply there, in verbal or figurative sense “present”, whether or not I pay them special attention by busying myself with them, considering, thinking, feeling, willing”.

Edmund Husserl: “Ideas. General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology”, page 101.Humanities Press Inc. USA 1969. (Translated by W.R. Boyce Gibson with a preface to the English edition by Edmund Husserl). Library Thing.

More on barebones pistops. 

“But this embarrassment disappears as soon as we consider that the life-world does have, in all its relative features, a general structure. This general structure, to which everything that exists relatively is bound, is not itself relative. We can attend to it in its generality and, with sufficient care, fix it once and for all in a way equally accessible to all”. 

Edmund Husserl: ”The Crisis of European Sciences and Transcendental Phenomenology”, translated by David Carr, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, USA 1970, page 139. (SBN:810102552). Library Thing. 

More on barebones pitstops.