Phenomenology of the Inapparent

Abstract

Phenomenology is traditionally considered to be a thought of presence, assigned to a phenomenon that is identified with the present being, or with an object for consciousness. In all cases, the phenomenon with which phenomenology is concerned always seems to be accessible to a conscious experience. Indeed, consciousness itself is nothing but a form of presence, i.e., a presence to self. As a thought of presence, and of presence to consciousness (itself, then, a form of presence), phenomenology would know nothing of the unconscious. However, I will suggest in the following pages that phenomenology is haunted by the presence of a certain unappearing dimension, an alterity that escapes presentation, which led Heidegger to characterize the most authentic sense of phenomenology as a “phenomenology of the inapparent.” I show how the “inapparent” plays in phenomenality and in phenomenology, stressing its ethical import as this withdrawal of presence within phenomena involves a responsibility to the otherness of a secret. Ultimately, this secret is a dimension that constantly haunts phenomenology, and to which it belongs, whether it knows it or not.