Embodied hermeneutics

In a significant sense there is no embodied hermeneutics, because hermeneutics is embodied by its nature and, hence, it should be needless to use an expression like “embodied hermeneutics”. Yet this contradictory statement requires a clarification of the terms “embodied”

and “hermeneutic experience”.

It seems that interpretation is often regarded as a purely intellectual achievement, and that is a false assumption. As stated earlier, Gadamer clearly stresses the degree to which human beings belong to history and are embedded in the cultural traditions of their society: we grow into an inescapable framework of culture and inherited habits. This growing is naturally not only an intellectual growing, but we belong

to that tradition with our whole body and soul, as it were. However, the bodily aspects of hermeneutic experience have not been underlined too much. That is partly understandable, because one of the main tasks of Heidegger’s phenomenology was to work out the existential situation of “Dasein”, of human beings. That, again evidently, includes the bodily dimension.

On the other hand, leadership research has also been accused of concentrating solely on the rational elements and neglecting aesthetic, emotional and bodily dimensions. The aesthetic leadership approach has paid particular attention to working out the meaning of bodily aspects of leadership (Hansen et al. 2007; Ropo and Parviainen 2001;

Ropo and Sauer 2007). I will return to the aesthetic leadership approach in more detail in the section on theory (Chapter 4).

The division of mind and body has of course its roots in western philosophical thinking:

“Dominant management thinking (…) is driven by rationality based on the Cartesian assumption, better, the prejudice, that res cogitans determines and controls the mere inert and passively reacting res extensa (…)” (Kornberger and Clegg 2003: 76).

Representing hermeneutics in the form of embodied experience thus problematizes the popular, nowadays almost commonsense separation of mental substance (mind) and corporeal substance (body). Instead of maintaining the Cartesian dualistic notion of res cogitans and res extensa, and instead of promoting neither materialism nor idealism, I employ the more ‘mutually constitutive approach’ by presuming that the physical and mental structures precede and enable, shape and are shaped by social structures.

Against this background there is still a need to explain embodied hermeneutics, and for that purpose I will now illustrate what the terms

“hermeneutic experience” and “embodied” mean in this context. A hermeneutic experience is an experience of something that differs from one’s experience so far. This definition implies that an experience in

hermeneutic terms is not a repetition of an earlier known moment, but something that fundamentally opposes and challenges our expecta-tions (Gadamer 2004). Since prejudices are largely acquired through culture and tradition, and these in turn have been acquired through the process of growing into a tradition, prejudices also have a bodily dimension and structure. Bodily dimension means that a) prejudices do not ‘live’ only in our head or intellect, and that b) when we want to understand the role of prejudices we need both res extensa and res cogitans, that is to our body, emotions, experiences and intellect. These ideas concerning embodied hermeneutics are backed by several further arguments. First, Heidegger in “Being and Time” discusses how we never start perceiving or interpreting with an empty head or tabula rasa, but are embedded in a fore-structure of understanding (Vor-struktur des Verstehens; Heidegger 1962: 191–192). This he illustrates by the terms pre-having, fore-sight and fore-conception. Fore-having (Vorhabe) is what we have in advance: the culture and the tradition we have inherited, the frames of reference and routines we are grown into.

It thus includes both practical and theoretical backgrounds. Fore-sight (Vorsicht) is the lens through which we ‘read’ any text or perceive any-thing. Perception is not innocent but always directed into someany-thing.

Fore-sight emphasises the meaning of intentions and possible uses: we read with a more or less conscious purpose in mind. Fore-conception (Vorgriff) refers to the presumptions and prejudices we have, but also the tools of communication and understanding: language and words.

The purpose of highlighting the issue of the fore-structure of under-standing is to underline that any underunder-standing is deeply embedded in human existence, and therefore the bodily dimension should not be forgotten when thinking of hermeneutics.

Second, more recent research also claims that our culture and sci-ence are obsessed with the brain. Noë (2009) argues that brain research has its own value, but human consciousness cannot be reduced into events in the nervous system.

“You are not your brain. We are not locked up in a prison of our own ideas and sensations. The phenomenon of consciousness, like that

of life itself, is a world-involving dynamic process. We are already at home in the environment. We are out of our heads” (Noë 2009: xiii).

According to Noë, consciousness requires a constant relation between brain, body and world. Because of this ongoing brain-focused tendency in research, a need to restate the argument for an embodiment of understanding still exists.

Third, since the 1920s and 30s organizational researchers have been interested in the role of emotions in the work place, although they became addressed explicitly in leadership research only in the late 1980s (Fineman 2003; Sauer 2005; Yukl 2010). This research has tended to take a rational approach to emotions, and the studies were mainly quantitative and positivist (Sauer 2005). As Sauer writes, people are yet “bodily creatures with all their joys and pains” (Sauer 2005: 88):

having been hurt physically or emotionally leaves scars and stigmas, and these experiences can awaken again later. Therefore embodied hermeneutics relies on an assumption that our current perceptions and experiences are also influenced by previous bodily experiences.

Fourth, Taylor (1995) notes that epistemology has historically favoured certain freedom-related key theses about human agency. First there is a picture of the human subject as disengaged, autonomous, free and rational, whose identity is not dominated by the environment but his own free will. Second, the self is seen as punctual and out of this position it can instrumentalize the world around and change it according to its taste. The third characteristic is a social consequence out of the two previous notions: that society is constituted by indi-vidual agents for indiindi-vidual purposes (Taylor 1995: 7). Taylor notes that these theses are controversial and questionable. Instead he stresses the importance of engaged agency, and critiques atomism by claiming that separated instances of knowledge or action cannot be intelligible in abstraction from the outside world.

These four arguments all illustrate the same point from different angles: human beings are embedded in their environment in ways that are both complex and profound. What does embodied hermeneutics mean in practical terms for a research like this? The concept explains

something of the way the interpretations in materials analysis were conducted. Interpretation does not consist solely of ‘brain-work’ or rational argumentation, but expects that the interpreter relates to the issue at stake through his/her experience, heritage and intellect.

Embodied hermeneutics requires in a particular manner that the background assumptions are made visible too – and these need to involve revealing some personal convictions and experiences too, as no interpretation is a sole intellectual achievement. I will explicate my own commitments in relation to empirical materials and analysis at the beginning of those chapters (Chapters 5, 6, 7).

3.3 The Fieldpath Method – off the beaten track