Meta-Genealogical Reflection: 7 Phenomenology and the Co-Constitution of Subject and World

Having examined relationality in historical and processual contexts, we now turn to phenomenology, where possibility is enacted through embodied, perspectival, and situated construal. Here, the relational medium is lived experience: subject and world co-constitute each other, and the field of potential is inseparable from the observer who inhabits it.

Heidegger’s notion of Being-in-the-World emphasises that understanding is always relational and contextual. The subject is not an isolated knower; it emerges within networks of significance, tools, practices, and others. Possibility is therefore inseparable from the structures of engagement that make perception, action, and interpretation intelligible.

Merleau-Ponty extends this insight through the embodiment of consciousness. Perception is not passive reception but an active modulation of relational fields: our bodies, senses, and habitual interactions shape the horizon of what can be experienced and conceived. Construal itself is an ongoing negotiation between self, environment, and symbolic structures.

Key construal strategies:

1. Embodied relationality — the body mediates between potential and actualisation; perception is both constrained and enabled by embodied capacities.

2. Situated possibility — potential emerges within specific contexts; meaning is perspectival rather than universal.

3. Co-constitution — subject and world are mutually dependent; each shapes and is shaped by the other in the unfolding of possibility.

Modulatory voices include phenomenologists, existentialists, and contemporary cognitive scientists, all of whom emphasise the interdependence of mind, body, and environment. The co-evolution of observer and observed demonstrates that possibility is enacted, not merely represented.

In sum, the phenomenological turn shows that relationality is practically lived, and the field of possibility is inseparable from the agent who navigates it. This perspective prepares the ground for exploring networked, systemic, and symbolic dimensions of relational construal in contemporary thought.