A phenomenology of/with total movement: Response to Erin Manning

In Wondering the world directly , Erin Manning criticizes phenomenology by drawing upon Merleau-Ponty s reflections on the problems of his own project and the criticisms of Jose Gil. Manning claims that phenomenology goes wrong in its privileging of the subject and processes of intentionality: the consciousness-object distinction . While phenomenology on this understanding alone is inadequate to account for movement and the body, process philosophy has the ability to create a field for experience that does not begin and end with a human subject . This article responds to Manning s criticism by arguing that phenomenology never intended to perpetuate a concept of subject that fixes an inexorable gap between itself and objects. A historical assessment of subjectivity and intentionality in the work of five different authors, alongside critical points that address Manning s misconstrual of phenomenology, leads to an understanding of movement that need not outrun the subject or become a precarious limit to perceptual experience because of its primacy.