Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland

and ofpurely subjective response are temporarily left out ofthe account" (Hufford: xv)1.
In both the social scientific and the "pedestrian" approaches to phenomenology the
experience behind narrative is central, and this approach requires that such experiences be
isolated from within the narratives themselves. What needs to be "bracketed off' within
phenomenological studies is a distinction between the phenomena itselfas object
(noeMa), and the experience of that phenomena (noesis) (Sobcllack, 1992: 34). The
pragmatics ofthis approach are that
knowledge is almost always characterized by typification and is essentially
oriented to solving practical problems [for those participating members of
the culture).... [It is suggested) thaI this everyday knowledge is creatively
produced by individuals who are also influenced by the accumulated
weight of institutionalized knowledge produced by others (Abercrombie.
etal.: 158).
I have already demonstrated how cultural discourses experienced by the cultural
practitioners themselves influence vernacular theory. but here I wish to point out that they
further influence this theorizing. perhaps even more deterministically by experience
within the culture itself!.
1 For an application of Hufford's "pedestrian phenomenology" to popular cinema. see
Koven, 1997.
} Sobchack stated that ..... the radical reflection ofphenomenology anempts to reanimate
the taken·for-granted and the institutionally sedimented (we would say 'the everyday' or
·vemacular]. And because it turns us (oware! the origins of our experience of phenomena
and acknowledges both the objective enworldedness of phenomena and the subjective
embodied experiencing them. such radical reflection opens up not only fresh possibilities
for living knowledge and experiencing phenomenon. for seeing the world and ourselves
in a critically aware way" (Sobchack. 1991: 28).
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