Harnessing Phenomenological Research to Facilitate Conscientização About Oppressive Lived Experience

Building Public Homeplaces via Dialogal Phenomenological Research

Sociologist Kai Erikson wrote that a significant effect of sociopolitical oppression is the “collective trauma” it produces, which he defines as “a blow to the basic tissues of social life that damages the bonds attaching people together and impairs the prevailing sense of communality” (Erikson, 1976, in Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 153). Collective trauma entails a destruction of social ties, as intimate tribal bonds are replaced with alienation and mistrust that ripples across society. To repair the fractured communal bonds caused by sociopolitical oppression, liberation psychologists Mary Watkins and Helene Shulman (2008) describe the need for “public homeplaces” to be erected, in which citizens with shared sociopolitical traumas can gather in protected spaces to regain a sense of community (p. 211). The notion of “homeplace” was first defined by critical theorist bell hooks to describe gathering sites in the public sphere produced by Black people in order to “confront the issue of humanization” and “build communities of resistance” (hooks, 1990, p. 42). Hooks elaborates that these sites of resistance can provide incredible community healing opportunities, offering Black people “the warmth and connection of shelter, the feeding of our bodies, the nurturing of our soul. There we claimed dignity, integrity of being; there we learned to have faith” (hooks, 1990, in Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 211). The experience of belonging to a public homeplace can be especially nurturing for citizens who have become so marginalized by society’s oppression that they feel isolated in their suffering. Such painful isolation can be relieved by mourning the realities of injustice with like-minded comrades, and realizing that one is not alone in their experience. Watkins and Shulman suggest that public homeplaces also provide a space to cultivate “deep listening” to all voices in the room. By listening to multiple personal experiences of sociopolitical oppression, citizens of public homeplaces can gain deeper insight—conscientização—into the collective trauma affecting all people in the room:

Individuals begin to see that what is being suffered is not only one’s own. Through active invitation, the bits and pieces each person knows and remembers about a situation under discussion are placed side by side until a fuller picture emerges. In this more detailed portrait of their shared situation, members begin to understand in what ways their personal problems reflect larger sociocultural arrangements. (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 216).

As such, public homeplaces can cultivate an intimate, healing sense of community. Through this very intimacy, citizens can dialogue and listen to each other in a manner that fosters conscientização about the widespread nature of sociopolitical oppression. Ultimately, this “fuller picture” can help citizens brainstorm solutions and generate change.

One vehicle with which to build public homeplaces for marginalized citizens is phenomenological research—particularly Steen Halling’s dialogal phenomenology. Traditional phenomenological research entails one researcher interviewing individual participants about their subjective lived experiences of a particular human phenomenon. The researcher interprets the data to unearth common themes that repeat across participants’ individual accounts of the phenomenon, in order to unearth existential meanings about that phenomenon as a shared human experience. Halling’s method of dialogal phenomenology differs in that its data collection and interpretation procedures entail a group process. A small group of co-researchers gather together to engage in intimate, vulnerable dialogue about their lived experiences of a specific human phenomenon. They vulnerably share their subjective experiences with each other and collaboratively reflect on the commonalities across their stories, in order to gain broader understanding of the phenomenon as a collective experience. Intimacy is a key ingredient driving dialogal phenomenological research, because “it is in the context of dialogue that presence and intimacy, truth and understanding, become possible” (Halling, 2005, p. 9). Thus, dialogal phenomenological research becomes a vehicle for community-building among co-researchers, who may form intimate bonds amidst their collective pursuit of knowledge about what it means to be human:

Out of this dialogue comes knowledge that both creates community and is grounded in community. That is, what is known grows out of the interaction between people that, in turn, leads to a deepening of community based on shared understanding. (Halling, 1994, p. 111)

Liberation psychologists can use dialogal phenomenological research to build public homeplaces for members of marginalized communities, who can gather together to engage in intimate dialogue regarding their lived experiences of sociopolitical oppression. By sharing their subjective experiences of oppression with one another, dialogal phenomenological research can alleviate the isolation caused by collective trauma and envelop marginalized citizens in a sense of community with fellow co-researchers who have been similarly wounded by society. This process can also spur conscientização among co-researchers about the phenomenon of sociopolitical oppression as a systemic issue. For, dialogal phenomenological research can invite group members to critically reflect on the similarities between their subjective accounts of oppression. This critical reflection can help them obtain nuanced, deep awareness about how the oppressive phenomenon operates at a collective level. Dialogal phenomenological research is particularly effective for facilitating critical consciousness because it allows co-researchers to come into intimate contact not only with each other but with the phenomenon itself. Halling recounts how, as each group member describes their lived experience in rich detail, the phenomenon’s felt presence becomes alive in the room:

It is especially striking how the phenomenon becomes vividly present in the group. Through the process described above, the researchers enter into an intimate relationship with what they are studying—it is not a topic “out there” but a reality that is in the room. (Halling, 2005, p. 5).

Thus, doing dialogal phenomenological research can awaken a vivid, felt experience of the oppressive phenomenon under inquiry. Through this vivid re-experiencing, group members can access rich, nuanced, experiential insights about the phenomenon. Accordingly, community members can co-create profound understanding about that phenomenon as a collective sociopolitical experience.

While vivid re-experiencing may be effective in generating conscientização, liberation psychologists warn that participatory research about sociopolitical oppression should be careful not to re-traumatize. Rather than remain at the level of traumatic recollection, it should also provide avenues for healing and transformation (Watkins & Shulman, 2008). To an extent, dialogal phenomenological research accomplishes this by facilitating supportive companionship between co-researchers, as group members became trusted allies while traversing the painful depths of their lived experience: “We find it so difficult to cope with our unfathomable depth all by ourselves that we constantly seek allies and support for our own psychic survival” (Fiumara, 2001, in Halling, 2005, p. 3). However, liberation psychologists suggest that emancipatory research should not merely foster community support regarding collective trauma; it must also spur community empowerment and social change. For instance, Watkins and Shulman describe a participatory action research (PAR) project about domestic violence against women, in which research participants not only recounted their individual experiences of domestic violence but also “created a shared understanding of domestic violence that could lead to community education and change that would mitigate against intimate violence against women” (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 281). Likewise, while participating in dialogal phenomenological research about an oppressive phenomenon, co-researchers can not only describe their painful experiences of oppression but also experiences of resiliency, hope, and empowerment. The group’s phenomenological dialogue could therefore identify resources for resiliency amidst experiences of marginalization, which could help develop social justice initiatives in society. Ultimately, dialogal phenomenological research can be used to build public homeplaces for marginalized citizens, who can form intimate bonds by sharing their lived experiences of oppression, co-create deep understanding about the systemic nature of this oppression, and collaboratively brainstorm ideas for social change.

It is important to note that the position of the academic researcher in dialogal phenomenological research aligns with the position of the academic researcher doing emancipatory research, as described by liberation psychologists. Rather than pursuing a traditional hierarchal dynamic of “academic researcher” and “participant subject,” everyone involved becomes co-researchers and co-participants in pursuit of collective knowledge. This aligns with Watkins and Shulman’s assertion that emancipatory research with marginalized communities must disrupt the hierarchal dynamic between “researcher” and “participant,” in which the academic researcher holds “expertise” and controls the research process. In conducting research with marginalized communities, this hierarchal dynamic reinforces the oppressive power structures of society. Rather, emancipatory research requires academic researchers to forgo “expertise” and exchange a professional veneer for a more vulnerable position in the research community (Watkins & Shulman, 2008). Dialogal phenomenological research allows academic researchers to espouse such vulnerability, because the process invites all people to share and reflect on their personal experiences of the phenomenon under inquiry. This vulnerable stance lets academic researchers admit that we too become healed by doing research, voicing our lived experiences, and connecting intimately with co-participants in ways that can shatter our own isolation.

It is also important to distinguish between the emancipatory methods of dialogal phenomenological research, as proposed by this article, and PAR methods, a widely embraced method among liberation psychologists. The dialogal phenomenological research method that I outline here is similar to PAR in that both methods view community members as co-researchers in the knowledge-production process (MacDonald, 2012). However, PAR attempts to completely eradicate hierarchal power dynamics by actively engaging community members as equal, collaborative partners in every step of research—including designing methods and procedures, collecting and analyzing data, presenting results, and determining actionable next steps for community change. In PAR, community members’ active participation in every stage of research is seen as empowering and transformative in itself, yet PAR also upholds concrete community change to be a key desired outcome of the research process (MacDonald, 2012). My vision of dialogal phenomenological research, as outlined here, differs from PAR because it focuses specifically on a collaborative approach to data collection and interpretation, whereby community members gather together in public homeplaces to describe and reflect on their lived experiences of oppression, and experience collective healing and empowerment in the process. Yet one could certainly extend this spirit of collaboration to all aspects of dialogal phenomenology, including research design and dissemination, to establish it as a novel method of PAR.

Building Bridges of Solidarity via Existential-Phenomenological Interpretation

Another goal of liberation psychology is to build bridges between the oppressed and oppressors, by fostering conscientização about how the current unjust sociopolitical order wounds everyone. lt promotes violence in the oppressors who, in turn, dehumanize the oppressed (Freire, 1968). Freire wrote that the process of emancipation requires oppressed citizens to not only to gain critical consciousness of the nature of injustice among themselves, but to also awaken oppressors’ consciousness to the fact that they too are dehumanized by an unjust society: “This, then, is the great humanistic and historical task of the oppressed: to liberate themselves and their oppressors as well” (Freire, 1968, p. 47). This awareness has the potential to alleviate alienation and unite all citizens together in communion and solidarity, which is a key tenet of Paulo Freire’s vision of emancipation.

Watkins and Shulman state that reconciliatory dialogue is necessary to achieve solidarity. Through reconciliatory dialogue, citizens on opposite sides of the social divide can arrive at empathic understandings of one another’s positions. In such encounters, bystanders and perpetrators of oppression must be willing to open their eyes to the painful realities of the oppressed, which they may have defended against witnessing to keep the status quo intact. Likewise, the oppressed must be willing to notice the vulnerability and pain that exist within oppressors, yet is disguised by psychological symptoms such as narcissism and psychic numbing (Freire, 1968; Watkins & Shulman, 2008). The mutual, empathic recognition that our current society is wounding everyone—albeit in different ways and to different degrees—becomes the common ground from which solidarity between the oppressed and oppressors can be nourished. An experience of “mutual humanization” can flourish from such encounters, as both the oppressors and oppressed reconnect with their own—and one another’s—humanity (Freire, 1968, p. 75). By gaining conscientização and participating in reconciliatory dialogue, both oppressed and oppressors may realize their common desire to obtain much more from life than the current sociopolitical order allows:

They may discover through existential experience that their present way of life is irreconcilable with their vocation to become fully human. They may perceive through their relations with reality that reality is really a process, undergoing constant transformation If men and women are searchers and their ontological vocation is humanization, sooner or later they may . . . engage themselves in the struggle for their liberation. (Freire, 1968, p. 56)

As a result of this discovery, both oppressed and oppressors may cease to be passive bystanders and decide to actively engage in emancipatory efforts to restore the shared humanity of all. It is indeed difficult to engage in reconciliatory dialogue. However, if no attempt is made to mend the broken bonds between the oppressed and oppressors, cycles of injustice, violence, and dehumanization will continue for generations to come (Watkins & Shulman, 2008).

Existential-phenomenological research can behave as a vehicle to build reconciliatory bridges of solidarity between the oppressed and oppressors. The philosophy of existential-phenomenology posits that there is a common humanity to which we all belong, despite our differences. Existential-phenomenologist Wilhelm Dilthey argued that this common humanity is the basis for empathic understanding. One human being is capable of understanding an other, and experiencing a semblance of the other’s experience, due to common structures of experience that are shared among all human beings, despite great deviations in how these structures manifest:

The uniformity of human nature is manifested in the fact that the same qualitative determinations and forms of connection appear with all men. . . . But the quantitative relationships in which they are presented are very different from one another. (Dilthey, 1894, p. 109).

Dilthey asserts that despite differences in the degree to which people experience certain phenomena, one can always identify commonalities across any two people’s subjective experiences, based on a shared humanity that bridges the divide. This framework of common humanity forms the basis for existential-phenomenological data interpretation. Van Manen (1990) states that “phenomenological research is a search for what it means to be human” (p. 12). In this method, the researcher collects individuals’ unique accounts of lived experience as data. Then, the researcher interprets the data to identify common existential structures that repeat across participants’ varied accounts of lived experience, in order to understand the phenomenon against the backdrop of the human condition. Van Manen explains,

The point of phenomenological research is to “borrow” other people’s experiences and their reflections on their experiences in order to better be able to come to an understanding of the deeper meaning of significance of an aspect of human experience, in the context of the whole of human experience. (Van Manen, 1990, p. 62)

Thus, existential-phenomenological data interpretation aspires to illuminate insight about “the whole of human experience,” the shared human condition. Interpreting phenomenological data in this manner can reconnect us with our own humanity, and the humanity of others, across diverse accounts of being human.

Producing an existential-phenomenological data interpretation based on “shared humanity” provides opportunity to cultivate solidarity among the oppressed and oppressors. Liberation psychologists can harness existential-phenomenological research to investigate the lived experience of various oppressive sociopolitical phenomena—such as how institutionalized racism, homophobia, or patriarchy is experienced subjectively by members of both marginalized and dominant cultural groups. The researcher can then produce an existential-phenomenological data interpretation that identifies common existential themes that repeat across participants’ unique accounts of lived experience. These lived experiences will likely vary widely based on the participant’s identity as a member of either the marginalized or dominant group. Nevertheless, by interpreting the data existentially, the final phenomenological interpretation may reveal similar wounds of humanity suffered by citizens across identity groups as a result of systemic oppression—albeit in different ways and to different degrees. For instance, in his memoir Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: An American Slave, Frederick Douglass (1845) described how the power dynamics of slavery perpetuated a tragic loss of humanity among both Black slaves and their White masters. Using his own lived experience of being a former slave, Douglass described how his White masters, in the process of cruelly dehumanizing their slaves, became increasingly dehumanized themselves as a result of becoming corrupted by slavery. Additionally, in his essay “Masculinity as Homophobia: Fear, Shame and Silence in the Construction of Gender Identity,” Michael S. Kimmel (2004) describes how homophobia not only forecloses intimate possibilities for sexual minorities but also for heterosexual men, who may feel compelled to sacrifice intimate social bonds with other men to avoid being seen as gay. Descriptions such as these illuminate the ways in which systemic oppression harms all citizens. Existential-phenomenological research can further demonstrate this point.

To highlight the shared humanity across participants’ lived experiences, phenomenological researchers often use existential thematic categories to organize data interpretation. For instance, phenomenological researchers may organize data interpretation around the thematic categories of temporality, spatiality, embodiment, and coexistence, identified by phenomenological philosophers as the basic existential givens of human existence (Van Manen, 1990). They may also organize their interpretation using Irvin Yalom’s (1980) existential givens of freedom, isolation, meaninglessness, and death. Phenomenological researchers pursuing emancipatory research can use these existential thematic categories to identify, for example, how White supremacy negatively affects the lived experience of freedom, intimacy, meaning, and mortality among People of Color and White people. While differences are surely plentiful across these lived experiences, there may also be commonalities amidst these differences that elucidate the wounds of systemic oppression on humanity as a collective. Thus, the existential-phenomenological research findings produced by this method can serve as a bridge to unite the oppressed and oppressors, by facilitating conscientização about how sociopolitical oppression injures the humanity of all. Ideally, this newfound awareness might facilitate empathic understanding and solidarity from the oppressors toward the oppressed. It may motivate them to change their oppressive attitudes and behaviors, as well as engage in advocacy efforts to transform the harmful sociopolitical structures that perpetuate dehumanization.

Evoking Compassionate Witness via Aesthetic Phenomenology

In the quest for collective emancipation, an additional task of liberation psychology is to transform passive bystanders of injustice into compassionate, engaged witnesses. Watkins and Shulman state that passive bystanders psychically numb themselves from the truth about societal injustice. This numbing perpetuates the normalization of structural violence: “bystanding allows status quo distributions of power and privilege to go unchecked, giving rise to what Arno Guen (2007) has called the “insanity” of normality” (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 64). As passive bystanders ignore the pain of others to preserve their own comfort, they risk losing their humanity and sense of community. Yet confronting injustice requires these citizens to possess the ability to bear witness to injustice in the first place. The ability to bear witness is challenged by cultures of silence, which preserve an “amputation of seeing” across society about the truth of oppression inflicting its citizens (Felman, 1992, in Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 51). For example, the Nazis enacted an “erasure of witness” to the atrocities they had committed against victims of the Holocaust, attempting to make the visible invisible not only by attempting to destroy physical evidence of genocide, but also by fracturing people’s psychic access to these atrocities (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 51). By erasing evidence and silencing speech, both Holocaust survivors and citizen bystanders suffered from fragmented consciousness and confusing gaps in memory that prevented them from bearing witness to the tragic truths occurring to them and around them (Watkins & Shulman, 2008). Healing from such atrocity involves all citizens regaining the ability to bear witness to, mourn, and make meaning of these previously invisible oppressive experiences.

Liberation psychologists embrace the arts as a powerful vehicle with which to disrupt this amputation of seeing and restore compassionate witness. Art can make the invisible become visible, helping to heal symptoms of dissociation and repression that maintain structural violence in society. Art can create a tangible memorial that declares the truth of injustice inflicted upon marginalized communities: “The work of liberation arts involves an interruption of dominant narratives, an awakening to silences, an articulation of the modes of forgetfulness that prevent dialogue” (Watkins & Shulman, 2008, p. 244). Watkins and Shulman (2008) write that art can act as a “tunnel that connects the outside to the inside” (p. 79) whereby the inner symptoms of suffering caused by oppression can be memorialized and visually articulated to the outside world. Audiences who are open to listening to the painful experiences of injustice expressed by this art will transform from passive bystanders to compassionate, engaged witnesses. Moreover, philosopher Martha Nussbaum (2013) identifies compassion as the quintessential emotion driving social justice, defined as “a painful emotion directed at the serious suffering of another creature or creatures” (p. 142). Yet human beings typically experience compassion towards people who are similar and familiar. Nussbaum states that the task of the artist in society is to broaden citizens’ circles of concern by creating artwork that cultivates widespread compassion toward unfamiliar others. The human mind is easily moved by aesthetic works, whose “indirect appeals to the emotions” often lead people to develop strong attachments to artworks and their subject matter (Nussbaum, 2013, p. 10). If a work of art conveys emotional experiences of injustice, it can accordingly move people to feel compassionately toward marginalized “others,” thereby transforming passive bystanders into engaged witnesses.

While compassion has not been specifically evaluated in many empirical studies, Nussbaum’s claims can nonetheless be supported by research which has studied whether empathy for marginalized people can be induced via media interventions. Batson et al. (1997) published a landmark research study which demonstrated that participants felt greater empathy and more positive attitudes toward people with AIDS after listening to a radio talk show in which a woman described her experience of living with AIDS. Johnson et al. (2013) published a study demonstrating that participants who read a vivid, descriptive novel about a Muslim woman facing Islamophobia experienced increased empathic feelings and decreased prejudiced attitudes, as compared with participants who read less aesthetically descriptive accounts of Islamophobia. Shih, Stotzer, and Gutiérrez (2013) studied cinema’s ability to induce empathy toward a cultural “other,” whereby White participants watched the film The Joy Luck Club, which features an Asian American protagonist, and were then asked to imagine how the character feels. They subsequently felt greater empathic feelings and reduced in-group bias toward Asian Americans than prior to the intervention. Finally, Kalyanaraman, Penn, Ivory, and Judge (2010) piloted a virtual reality intervention that simulated the sensory experience of living with schizophrenia. Their results showed that participants who experienced the virtual reality simulation and engaged in written reflection about it afterward experienced increased empathic feelings and positive attitudes toward people with schizophrenia than prior to the intervention.

Since these aesthetic media interventions show a marked increase in prosocial feelings toward “marginalized others,” phenomenological researchers can also consider presenting research in artistic formats to promote empathy and compassion about oppression. The harmonious marriage between aesthetics and phenomenology was written about by Merleau-Ponty (1968), who perceived art as an ideal form of phenomenological language because it could “plunge into the world instead of surveying it,” therefore expressing lived experience in a sensual, direct manner that is faithful to our nascent perception (p. 38). Heidegger (1950), too, conceived of art as an exemplary phenomenological vehicle, because a work of art can directly and immediately disclose “being-in-the-world” to its viewers. These philosophers seem to have influenced Van Manen’s assertion that phenomenological research is “not unlike an artistic endeavor” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 39). Van Manen states that, similar to artists, phenomenological researchers should strive to produce descriptions of lived experience whose expression is poetic, evocative, and sensual. Similarly, phenomenological researcher Luce-Kapler posits that research findings can be “viewed as aesthetic creations” and that qualitative researchers have increasingly represented their findings through works of art such as novellas and poetry (Luce-Kapler, 2008, in Applebaum, 2012, p. 53). Todres and Galvin (2008) explicitly call for an “aesthetic phenomenology,” through which phenomenological research is disseminated via aesthetic language to “carry forward” the sensorial, textural, and emotional dimensions of lived experience (p. 569). While Todres and Galvin embraced poetry as their artform of choice, Mahone adapted their aesthetic phenomenological method to create visual drawings that illustrated her participants’ lived experiences of miscarriage (Mahone, 2015). Among all these phenomenological researchers, the main objective for their research is to produce an aesthetic description about lived experience that evokes emotional resonance and empathic understanding among audiences. As such, the “validity” of aesthetic phenomenological research can be measured by whether the final aesthetic creation is poignant enough to “bring an otherwise sober-minded person (the reader but also the author) to tears” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 132).

Phenomenological researchers can conduct research with marginalized community members about their oppressed experiences and then disseminate research findings to the public via artistic formats. This phenomenological art can reverse the amputation of seeing that maintains social injustice. It can visually illustrate, in sensual detail, the lived experiences of citizens who have been silenced by society. Creating phenomenological art about oppressive lived experiences allows marginalized community members to give testimony to and memorialize their trauma, which can be healing for them (Watkins & Shulman, 2008). Moreover, it poses an opportunity for macro-level societal healing, because citizens who bear witness to the phenomenological art may transform from passive bystanders to compassionate, engaged witnesses. The sensorial, textural, and emotional dimensions of aesthetic phenomenological research may absorb viewers in the lifeworlds of their marginalized fellow citizens. Todres and Galvin state that aesthetic phenomenological research allows audiences to “find themselves” in the research and experience a “deep feeling of recognition that that may be characterized by the kind of ontological weight that connects us to the place where we feel both deeply ourselves and deeply connected to our common humanity” (Todres & Galvin, 2008, p. 569). While phenomenologists have historically embraced poetry and painting as ideal aesthetic phenomenological vehicles, in the 21st century, phenomenological researchers can consider harnessing the digital media arts to evoke public witness of oppressive lived experiences. Digital storytelling, short films, and virtual reality simulations pose innovative options for qualitative researchers to evoke empathic understanding about social injustice (Lambert, 2002; Muckersie, 2017). These multisensory forms of art can penetrate audiences in a manner that leaves a profound emotional and visceral impact. Audiences may subsequently become personally attached to, identified with, and moved by phenomenological art about people who are different than them, thereby broadening their circles of concern (Nussbaum, 2013). Thus, aesthetic phenomenological research may spur citizens to act with greater compassion, altruism, and advocacy toward others in situations of social injustice.

The Phenomenological Road to Emancipation

This article proposes three avenues through which phenomenological research can facilitate conscientização for the task of liberation psychology. Dialogal phenomenological research can help members of marginalized communities gather together in public homeplaces to voice, share, and make meaning of their individual and collective experiences of sociopolitical oppression. Existential-phenomenological interpretations can build bridges of solidarity through which the oppressed and oppressors gain insight into how unjust sociopolitical systems harm the humanity of all. Aesthetic phenomenological research can create emancipatory artworks that induce visceral empathy and compassion among viewers, to transform passive bystanders into engaged witnesses. And while this article aims to provide methodological innovation, simultaneously it strives to return to the roots of liberation psychology. For, Paulo Freire’s vision of emancipation did not rest on abstract, intellectualized theory, but on citizens’ everyday, intimate, lived experiences, including his own:

Freire’s denunciation of oppression was not merely the intellectual exercise that we often find among more facile liberals and pseudo-critical educations. His intellectual brilliance and courage in denouncing the structures of oppression were rooted in a very real and material experience. . . . Thus Pedagogy of the Oppressed has its roots in Paulo Freire’s lived experiences. (Freire, 1968, p. 12)

Thus, liberation psychology has always been a phenomenological endeavor, rooted in lived experience. Moreover, phenomenology has always been an exceptional vehicle to comprehend sociopolitical oppression. Husserl proclaimed that true knowledge of any human phenomena can only be achieved by going back “to the things themselves,” in order to shine a light on dimensions of human experience that have previously been concealed (Husserl, 2001, p. 168). Van Manen asserted that “turning to the nature of lived experience” allows us to “understand better what is most common, most taken-for-granted, and what concerns us most ordinarily and directly” (Van Manen, 1990, p. 19). Phenomenology allows us to unconceal and shine a light on the ordinary, insidious, lived experiences of injustice that individuals and communities have suffered through for generations. Just as lived experience is the starting point to phenomenology, lived experience is the starting point to justice.