WORKING AS A COORDINATOR MIDWIFE IN A TERTIARY ...

Time and Temporality
For Heidegger (1927/1962), ‘Being’ does not correlate with the sense of ‘being present’,
rather, ‘being is time’ and relates to the temporality of that ‘being’. This is a very
different concept to time as we know it, which is associated with measurement and the
use of a watch, a clock, a calendar or a diary.’ The reader is challenged by Harman
(2007) to “to forget every scientific theory about how the world works, and to focus
instead on a patient, detailed description of how the world appears to us before we invent
any theories” (p.4). There is the subsequent challenge that when an entity does become
apparent “it may show itself as something which it is not… it may rather ‘seem to be’”
(Heidegger, p.51). In this study I will search for the hidden, the concealed and the
invisible, seeking to articulate the meaning that lies within and behind what is said.
Facticity
Heidegger used the word ‘facticity’ which Harman (2007) elucidates is when “human life
is not something visible from the outside, but must be seen in the very act, performance,
or execution of its own reality, which always exceeds any of the properties we can list
about it” (p.25). Coordinator midwives have shared stories with me which are unique to
each of them and are set within their own contexts of their individual life worlds. Human
life is fluid, it is immersed in the specifics of its situation, there is a context to events,
time does not stand still and every person uniquely interacts with his or her surroundings.
To this end, in a hermeneutic approach things can never fully be seen, rather they require
interpretation which Smythe (in Giddings & Wood, 2001) explains “is uncovering the
meaning that’s sometimes hidden” (p.22). There is a quest by the researcher to uncover
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