Phenomenology as an Event: Claude Romano and the transformation of phenomenological thinking

Abstract

This article investigates whether Claude Romano’s phenomenological proposal can be properly characterized as an evential phenomenology. The analysis focuses on the transformation Romano enacts upon Heidegger’s hermeneutical phenomenology, with L’événement et le monde as its central point. It is argued that Romano’s work does not merely describe events as a new type of phenomenon, but reconfigures core phenomenological concepts. From this perspective, the article defends the thesis that L’événement et le monde is not only about events— it is itself an event, insofar as it transforms the possibilities of phenomenology. This claim is developed through the four features that, according to Romano, define a genuine event: univocal assignation, world-creating power, non-causal rupture, and futurally oriented temporality. Finally, it is shown that Romano structurally repeats Heidegger’s gesture, by which reflective phenomenology (Husserl) was transformed into hermeneutical phenomenology. What Romano makes explicit, then, is not merely a new thematic object, but the very mode of operation of phenomenology as event. Phenomenology, the article concludes, is not only capable of describing events—it is itself evential, to the extent that it allows itself to be transformed by what it seeks to think.