Abstract Book of the 11th International Academic Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2025
[PDF]
From Experience to Expression: A Phenomenological Pathway to Liturgical Creation and Understanding
Dr. Roberta Nolan
ABSTRACT:
My 2005 PhD dissertation, Art and Difficulty in the Modern World, drew significantly from the theories of Theodor Adorno and Paul Ricoeur. While Ricoeur’s hermeneutics and metaphor theories were initially applied in a secular context, the contemporary crisis of meaning and communal understanding, exacerbated by widespread misinformation and disinformation in political discourse, compels a return to the foundational, often religious, basis of such theoretical frameworks. This research analyzes the concept and articulation of liturgy, employing hermeneutics for a nuanced and contextually aware examination of liturgical practices. Furthermore, it investigates religious communal language as essential jargon, arguing that its universalization from outside diminishes group identity and the significance of tradition. The aim is to locate religious jargon within today’s cultural landscape and explore its disempowerment through a drive toward simplistic language. Finally, the study will explore phenomenology as a vital method for liturgical creation and reflection, fostering a deeper, experience-based understanding of the lived realities and intentional structures inherent in liturgical practice, thereby enriching both its formation and reception.
Keywords: pedestrian, language, hermeneutics, non-identical, dialectical