Tran Duc Thao: The Foundations of Anti-Colonial Phenomenology

This article argues that Tran Duc Thao’s anticolonial work constitutes one of the first mobilizations of phenomenology in a political context. It also argues that by transposing Husserl’s reflections on objective sense and on transcendental horizons to the pre-objective sphere of perception, as well as drawing on Husserl’s genetic analyses on the affective dimensions of modalization to articulate a form of homeworld/alienworld structure, Tran Duc Thao anticipates generative developments in phenomenology and foreshadows the movement of critical phenomenology. However, as this article also argues, he further anticipates potential limits to generative renewal and critique, brought about by the horizons of meaning and material conditions of community existence. But, this article concludes, those limits are not absolute; rather, they are conditioned by the very horizons that institute them and can only be overcome experientially. Thus, only an experience of failure, as Thao argues, can motivate the radical revision of the ultimate horizons that condition the meaning of our existence, and thereby enable its transformation.