Abstract
Since the inception of phenomenological philosophy at the outset of the 20ieth century, it
has spurred a number of responses and developments. As a supposed 'radicalisation of
philosophy', in the specification of philosophy as 'practice', it set its focus with a 'return
to experience'. However, as the development into various forms of phenomenology
brought to light, the practice of classical phenomenology involved a 'scientism' that leads
to specific impasses. Husserlian phenomenological methodology, beyond developments
and differences in subject matter and emphasis between the earlier and later works,
ultimately rests on problematic premises: the return to the 'experiences of thinking and
knowing' relied on a supposition of rational intuitive knowledge based in a correlation of
'eidetic seeing' and a determinable essence of things. Classical phenomenology operates
with an ultimately reductive account of cognition, insofar as the focus remains with the
rationality of a thought in supposed adequation to itself and the essential generalities
ultimately referable to it.
This thesis takes up the question of the missing aspect in classical phenomenology's
inadequate account of cognition and genesis. It does so by engaging with a specific
response to classical phenomenology according to the work of Gilles Deleuze and Michel
Henry and Emmanuel Levinas's and Jacques Derrida's reading of Husserl. The thesis
addresses these writers in the capacity that their work comes together in a particular
approach to embodiment or corporeality, which identifies the aporias that inform the
determinations and theoretical assumptions of classical phenomenology. To this extent
their work represents a singular French response to Husserl, operating close to the
phenomenological discourse. Bringing together these approaches to embodiment sheds
light on the manner in which classical phenomenology operates with a reductive account
of language and signification and allows me to ask the question of immanent genesis. A
re-examination of genesis is brought about through the specific orientation pertaining to
the question of genesis in the work of Deleuze, Henry, Levinas and Derrida.
The re-orientation of certain premises of classical phenomenology undermines some of
its central tenets and thematisation. The re-orientation demonstrates that a tradition of
thought, culminating in classical phenomenology, operates according to a certain
forgetfulness of the subjective body, of sensibility or the body in thought, which prevents
an adequate account of genesis and language/signification. This thesis argues that these
specific approaches to embodiment and language provide an adequate notion of
immanent genesis, and opens up a space for a re-examination of and challenge to the
orientation of T/thought with regard to its presumptions regarding genesis and meaning.
The thesis concludes with a consideration of the art of Henri Michaux, and argues that
this specific reception of classical phenomenology develops an understanding of genesis
that is crucial to understanding this work