Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience

“Experience” is a concept paradoxically deployed to accentuate the aconceptual. Although thinking, knowing, reflecting, and analyzing are kinds of experiences, invocations of “experience” typically direct our attention to what is immediate, embodied, unrepresented, unthought, even unthinkable. And y...

Celý popis

Uloženo v:
Podrobná bibliografie
Hlavní autor: Bowker, M.H.
Médium: Online
Jazyk:angličtina
Vydáno: punctum books 2021
Témata:
On-line přístup:1004563
Tagy: Přidat tag
Žádné tagy, Buďte první, kdo vytvoří štítek k tomuto záznamu!
_version_ 1869524975457665024
author Bowker, M.H.
author_browse Bowker, M.H.
author_facet Bowker, M.H.
author_sort Bowker, M.H.
collection Directory of Open Access Books
description “Experience” is a concept paradoxically deployed to accentuate the aconceptual. Although thinking, knowing, reflecting, and analyzing are kinds of experiences, invocations of “experience” typically direct our attention to what is immediate, embodied, unrepresented, unthought, even unthinkable. And yet, whether by learning experience, traumatic experience, life experience, mystical experience, or all of these, we hope most fervently that our experience will teach us, transform us, become part of us. Why do we strive to find, profit from, and possess experience while insisting upon experience’s intellectual elusiveness? What do we intend when we petition (and re-petition) experience for truth, for growth, for strength? To whom or to what do we sing when we sing experience’s song? Escargotesque, or, What is Experience? asks why both our lived experiences and our mythologies of experience so often fold inward, repeat, return. Departing from his unusual experience of working as a garbage-collector in the West African country of Benin, M.H. Bowker converses with several champions of experience (from Michel de Montaigne to John Dewey, from Søren Kierkegaard to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Simone Weil to R.D. Laing) to pose radical questions about the intentions and dynamics that guide our quest for experience, intentions and dynamics that are more destructive and more melancholy than celebrants of experience would care to admit. Across Escargotesque’s six loosely linear parts, fragments of prose memoir intersect with poetry, sketch art, philosophical reflection, cultural criticism, and psychological examination in ways that both evoke and unsettle the thinking person’s experience. Escargotesque both testifies to an experience and reveals surprising fantasies driving the modern and postmodern turn to experience as a source of truth and hope. Such fantasies include the sacredness of even the most violent ‘pure experience,’ the necessity of supplicating experience’s objects, and the ultimate demise of the one who experiences.
format Online
id doab-20.500.12854ir-39577
institution Directory of Open Access Books
language eng
publishDate 2021
publishDateRange 2021
publishDateSort 2021
publisher punctum books
publisherStr punctum books
record_format ojs
spelling doab-20.500.12854ir-395772025-02-13T09:47:10Z Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience Bowker, M.H. philosophy phenomenology experience memoir Africa thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800 “Experience” is a concept paradoxically deployed to accentuate the aconceptual. Although thinking, knowing, reflecting, and analyzing are kinds of experiences, invocations of “experience” typically direct our attention to what is immediate, embodied, unrepresented, unthought, even unthinkable. And yet, whether by learning experience, traumatic experience, life experience, mystical experience, or all of these, we hope most fervently that our experience will teach us, transform us, become part of us. Why do we strive to find, profit from, and possess experience while insisting upon experience’s intellectual elusiveness? What do we intend when we petition (and re-petition) experience for truth, for growth, for strength? To whom or to what do we sing when we sing experience’s song? Escargotesque, or, What is Experience? asks why both our lived experiences and our mythologies of experience so often fold inward, repeat, return. Departing from his unusual experience of working as a garbage-collector in the West African country of Benin, M.H. Bowker converses with several champions of experience (from Michel de Montaigne to John Dewey, from Søren Kierkegaard to Ralph Waldo Emerson, from Simone Weil to R.D. Laing) to pose radical questions about the intentions and dynamics that guide our quest for experience, intentions and dynamics that are more destructive and more melancholy than celebrants of experience would care to admit. Across Escargotesque’s six loosely linear parts, fragments of prose memoir intersect with poetry, sketch art, philosophical reflection, cultural criticism, and psychological examination in ways that both evoke and unsettle the thinking person’s experience. Escargotesque both testifies to an experience and reveals surprising fantasies driving the modern and postmodern turn to experience as a source of truth and hope. Such fantasies include the sacredness of even the most violent ‘pure experience,’ the necessity of supplicating experience’s objects, and the ultimate demise of the one who experiences. 2021-02-10T12:58:18Z 2019-03-26 23:55 2020-01-23 14:09:07 2020-04-01T10:42:43Z 2015 book 1004563 OCN: 945783312 http://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/25532 9780692373880 https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/39577 eng open access image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg image/jpeg n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25532/1/1004563.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25532/1/1004563.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25532/1/1004563.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25532/1/1004563.pdf https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/20.500.12657/25532/1/1004563.pdf punctum books 10.21983/P3.0089.1.00 10.21983/P3.0089.1.00 12970da4-0116-4486-b8be-fc9756703ab1 9780692373880 ScholarLed 116 Brooklyn, NY open access
spellingShingle philosophy
phenomenology
experience
memoir
Africa
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800
Bowker, M.H.
Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title_full Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title_fullStr Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title_full_unstemmed Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title_short Escargotesque, or, What Is Experience
title_sort escargotesque or what is experience
topic philosophy
phenomenology
experience
memoir
Africa
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800
topic_facet philosophy
phenomenology
experience
memoir
Africa
thema EDItEUR::Q Philosophy and Religion::QD Philosophy::QDH Philosophical traditions and schools of thought::QDHR Western philosophy from c 1800
url 1004563
work_keys_str_mv AT bowkermh escargotesqueorwhatisexperience