We live today within a system in which state and corporate power aim to render space flat, transparent, and uniform, for only then can it be truly controlled. The gaze of power and the commodity form are capable of infiltrating even the darkest of corners, and often, we invite them into our most private spaces. We do so as a matter of convenience, but also to placate ourselves and cope with the alienation inherent in our everyday lives. The resulting dominant (...) space can best be termed totalitarian. It is space stripped of uniqueness, deprived of the “spatial aura” necessary for authentic experience. In Totalitarian Space and the Destruction of Aura, Saladdin Ahmed sets out to help us grasp what has been lost before no trace remains. He draws attention to that which we might prefer not to see, but despite the bleakness of this indictment of reality, the book also offers a message of hope. Namely, it is only once we comprehend the magnitude of the threat to our spatial experience and our own complicity in sustaining this system that we can begin to resist the totalizing forces at work. (shrink)

In response to the so-called crisis in contemporary education in the institutions of higher learning —the encroachment of corporatism and pervasion of standardization—there is a move to offset this dominance by reconceiving the university in terms of an intimate space of dwelling in learning and education. In light of this moribund condition in education, I address the following concerns: How should educators approach the ‘space’ of learning in the new millennium with respect to the supposed ‘new face’ of education in (...) higher learning? What implication will such changes to curriculum have on the ‘context’ of learning? Will the context of learning now need to be reconceptualized, and if it is, what effects will this have on students and educators? Herein I consider the contributions that the philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s phenomenological ontology of space, dwelling, and the creative imagination might make to the formulation of rejoinders to these crucial questions and concerns, which offer the reader a reconceived view of the space of learning that is radically at odds with our contemporary conceptions that might be linked with social efficiency ideology. (shrink)

This paper goes beyond critiques of western philosophical notions of space as passive, feminine, and unintelligent by reconfiguring containment as an active process. The author draws on work in the history of technology, on a cybernetic epistemology that emphasizes the interdependence of organism and environment, and on intersubjectivist psychoanalytic theories of the maternal provision. A more unexpected ally is found in Heidegger, whose writings on holding and supply are read in ways that contribute to the development of an urgently required (...) philosophy of container technologies. (shrink)

The debate on personal persistence has been characterized by a dichotomy which is due to its still Cartesian framwork: On the one side we find proponents of psychological continuity who connect, in Locke’s tradition, the persistence of the person with the constancy of the first-person perspective in retrospection. On the other side, proponents of a biological approach take diachronic identity to consist in the continuity of the organism as the carrier of personal existence from a third-person-perspective. Thus, what accounts for (...) someone’s persistence over time, is the continuity of his mind on the one hand, and the continuity of his body on the other. In contrast to those views, the paper intends to show that bodily existence represents the basis of selfhood across time, both as the continuity of the experiential self and as the continuity of the autopoietic organism. On the one hand, the lived body conveys a continuity of the self from a first-person perspective, namely a pre-reflective feeling of sameness or a felt constancy of subjectivity. Moreover, an analysis of awakening and sleep shows that there is a continuous transition from full wakefulness to periods of deep sleep which may thus not be regarded as a complete interruption of subjective experience. On the other hand, this constancy converges with the continuity of the organismic life process as conceived from a third-person perspective. Thus, the experiential self of bodily subjectivity and the autopoietic self of the living organism should be regarded as two aspects of one and the same life process. Finally, the lived body also exhibits a specific form of memory that results from the continual embodiment of existence: it consists of all the affinities, capacities and experiences, which a person has acquired throughout his life. Thus, it provides a continuity of self that must not be actively produced through remembering, but rather integrates the person’s entire past in his present being and potentiality. (shrink)

This paper identifies a form of remembering sufficiently overlooked that it has not yet been dignified with a name. I shall christen it Rilkean Memory. This form of memory is, typically, embodied and embedded. It is a form of involuntary, autobiographical memory that is neither implicit nor explicit, neither declarative nor procedural, neither episodic nor semantic, and not Freudian. While a discussion of the importance of Rilkean memory lies beyond the scope of this paper, I shall try to show that (...) admitting Rilkean memory into our ontology does point us in the direction of a very different conception of the mind and mental processes. (shrink)

The book is an attempt to explore the affinities between contemporary critical theories and modernist and postmodernist American poetry. The analysis focuses on poststructuralist theories, notorious for their tendency to destabilize generic boundaries between literary, philosophical and critical discourses. The main argument and the structure of the book derive from Jacques Derrida’s essay “Che cos’è la poesia” [What is poetry?] in which the philosopher postulates the impossibility of defining poetry by comparing a poem to a hedgehog – prickly, solitary, untamed, (...) fragile and protective, rolling itself up into a ball at the first sign of danger or when in the hands of the reader-intruder. The metaphor captures thus the fragility of the relationship between poetry and the world. The book examines this relationship as exemplified by the erinaceous poetics of high modernists and their postmodernist followers In the study I employ also other oststructuralist theories, such as the notion of the text and the pleasure of the text formulated by Roland Barthes, the heories of metaphor as seen by Paul Ricoeur or Paul de Man, and gender-sensitive theories of Helene Cixous and Luce Irigaray. (shrink)

Through a phenomenological study of horse-human relations, this article explores the ways in which, as embodied beings, we live relationally, rather than as separate human identities. Conceptually this challenges oppositional logic and humanist assumptions, but where poststructuralist treatments of these issues tend to remain abstract, this article is concerned with an embodied demonstration of the ways in which we experience a relational or in-between logic in our everyday lives.

This essay argues a case for viewing Derrida's work in the context of recent French epistemology and philosophy of science; more specifically, the critical‐rationalist approach exemplified by thinkers such as Bachelard and Canguilhem. I trace this line of descent principally through Derrida's essay ‘White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy’. My conclusions are (1) that we get Derrida wrong if we read him as a fargone antirealist for whom there is nothing ‘outside the text'; (2) that he provides some (...) powerful counter‐arguments to this and other items of current postmodern wisdom; (3) that deconstruction is more aptly viewed as continuing the epistemo‐critical approach developed by thinkers like Bachelard; and (4) that it also holds important lessons for philosophy of science in the mainstream Anglo‐ American ‘analytic’ tradition. (shrink)

Spaces of Geographical Thought examines key ideas like space and place - which inform the geographic imagination. The text: discusses the core conceptual vocabulary of human geography: agency: structure; state: society; culture: economy; space: place; black: white; man: woman; nature: culture; local: global; and time: space; explains the significance of these binaries in the constitution of geographic thought; and shows how many of these binaries have been interrogated and re-imagined in more recent geographical thinking. A consideration of these binaries will (...) define the concepts and situate students in the most current geographical arguments and debates. The text will be required reading for all modules on the philosophy of geography and on geographical theory. (shrink)

This article explores tacit knowledge of lived experience and how this form of knowledge relates to design research. It investigates how interior designers interpret user lived experiences when creating designed environments. The article argues that user experience is the basis of a form of knowledge that is useful for designers. The theoretical framework proposed in the article examines the nature of user experience and how it can be utilized in the design process. The study of lived experiences is contextualized within (...) aesthetic, subjective, and functional aspects of the interior design process, which requires users to express their meanings and needs. A case study is described to illustrate the various stages of this process. (shrink)

The phenomenological attitude is essential for practising phenomenology. Many refer to wonder and wonderment as basic attitudes and ways of being present with and listening to phenomena. In this article a critical view is placed on the typically psychologically-loaded language and tonality that is used by phenomenological researchers in the human sciences in order to describe the wonder and openness they try to be a part of when doing phenomenology. With reference to the difference between Heidegger’s and Gadamer’s views on (...) Socratic dialectics the author points to an ontological dimension in the phenomenology of wonder that cannot be reached by taking only an emotional-bodily-oriented approach (the psychological approach) or an aesthetical-intuitiveoriented approach (the late Heidegger poeticised philosophizing). Instead this dimension must be reached through a Socratic questioning and Community of Wonder. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology , Volume 12, Special Edition July 2012. (shrink)

Felt presence, a sensation that “someone is there”, is an integral part of our everyday experience. It can manifest itself in a variety of forms ranging from most subtle fleeting impressions to intense hallucinations of demonic assault or visions of the divine. Felt presence phenomenon outside of the context of neurological disorders is largely neglected and not well understood by contemporary science. This paper focuses on the experiential and expressive qualities of the phenomenon and attempts to bring forth the complexity (...) and the richness of possibilities for inter- and intrasubjective awareness represented by these experiences. Are these simply misperceptions and hallucinations heightened and enforced by the mystical or superstitious mind? Or are these entities projections of our own “selves”, elements of self-estrangement? How are such experiences shaping our understanding of ourselves and of others? And finally, what is the interplay between intersubjective, private experiences and private or public spaces of dwelling? (shrink)

This paper argues that in foregoing the questions that emerge from the dialectical relationship between form and meaning, an intrinsic fallacy mistakes the relationship between the arts and education for a simplistic mechanism of signification—a false “ease”—where empty forms are supposedly given meaning by ethical and aesthetic givens as if the pedagogy of art were analogous to an empty room that was (or still needs to be) inhabited. Art’s false “ease” presents a tautology that presumes the relationship between the arts (...) and learning on assumptions that force a false equivalence between (a) the perception of implicit causes that constitute a number of externalised artistic attributes (such as creative, critical, and intuitive forms of thinking and making) by which the arts are instrumentalised, and (b) a number of desired effects that are seen as being equal to the relative value that an arts subject (or discipline) commands in a perceived relationship with the world in terms of its use and therefore function. To counter this distortion this paper makes a case for a pedagogical aesthetics that would unlearn—and thereby exit—the educationalist tautology of art’s false ease. While politically this would mean that the arts are recognized in their ability to think and act outside the traditional notion of schooling as a walled polis, philosophically this represents a challenge to move arts education away from the “spatial” concepts by which dialectical narratives, such as those of form and content, have been hitherto assumed as constructivist signifiers. (shrink)

This paper aims to trace the evolution of Bachelard's thought as he gropes toward a concrete formulation of a philosophy of the imagination. Reverie, the creative daydream, occupies the central position in Bachelard's emerging metaphysic, which becomes increasingly “phenomenological” in a manner reminiscent of Husserl. This means that although Bachelard does not use Husserlian terms, he appropriates the following features of (Husserlian) phenomenology: 1. a desire to “embracket” the initial (rationalistic) impulse; and 2. an aspiration to apprehend in its entirety, (...) the creative epiphany of an image. Ultimately, this paper aims to show that there is a sense in which Bachelard's metaphysical concerns in his poetics are an outgrowth of (rather than radical break from) his earlier scientific and epistemological concerns. What results in reverie is an aesthetic intentionality providing a metaphysic of the imagination: the aesthetic object, such as fire or water, is an object only insofar as it enables/calls forth a subject to enter into a receptive, self-aware and cosmic state of being; subject-ness and object-ness are intimately and archetypally intertwined. Bachelard's “new poetics” results from his transplantation/cross-fertilization of the general epistemology of the “new scientific spirit” on to/across his aesthetics. (shrink)

My research into Virtual Reality technology and its central property of immersion has indicated that immersion in Virtual Reality (VR) electronic systems is a significant key to the understanding of contemporary culture as well as considerable aspects of previous culture as detected in the histories of philosophy and the visual arts. The fundamental change in aesthetic perception engendered by immersion, a perception which is connected to the ideal of total-immersion in virtual space, identifies certain shifts in ontology which are relevant (...) to a better understanding of the human being. This understanding was achieved through a broad inquiry into the histories of Virtual Reality, philosophy, and the visual arts and has lead to the formulation of an aesthetic theory of immersive consciousness indicative of immersive culture. The primary subject of this discourse is immersion then: an experience which will be identified within the dissertation as the indispensable characteristic of Virtual Reality. The understanding of immersion arrived at here will be used to fashion a synchronous theory of art particularly informed by encounters and concepts of immersion into virtuality. To sufficiently address this subject in a scholarly fashion, I have researched, found and accumulated aesthetic and philosophic examples of immersive tendencies, as found within the histories of art and philosophy, which subsequently contributed towards the articulation of what I have come to call immersive consciousness. As a result of formulating such an immersive consciousness, a good deal of the basis for the questioning of the Western ontological tradition has been found in the Western tradition itself when we look with new eyes and ask new uncertain questions. Moreover, this immersive consciousness will be used to propose some abstract questions encircling today's electronic-based culture. Through the structuring of the argument within the thesis - and overtly within the conclusion - I have articulated a non-teleological creative strategy which provides the basis for an unconstraining integration of noologies (ways of semblancing the thinking process). This strategy provides a means of exemplifying - and for honoring - various methods of thinking. This structuring strategy is consistent with the 'hacker ethic' as defined by Steven Levy, as a demand that access to computers - and anything which might teach us something about the way the world works - should be unlimited and total. To follow this strategy, this dissertation has set out to understand how topical conceptions of virtual immersion connect to pre-existing systems of thought as revealed in art as they have extended out of antecedent ontological self-understandings, historical human self-understandings which have evidenced themselves in the elaboration of technological objectives. To do this I have forged a certain rhizomatic paternity/maternity for Virtual Reality within this dissertation by joining choice immersive examples of simulacra technology into mental connections with the relevant examples culled from the histories of art, architecture, information-technology, sex, myth, space, consciousness and philosophy. (shrink)

Agoraphobia is commonly considered to be a fear of outside, open, or crowded spaces, and is treated with therapies that work on acclimating the agoraphobic to external places she would otherwise avoid. I argue, however, that existential phenomenology provides the resources for an alternative interpretation and treatment of agoraphobia that locates the problem of the disorder not in something lying beyond home, but rather in a flawed relationship with home itself. More specifically, I demonstrate that agoraphobia is the lived body (...) expression of a person who has developed an inward-turning tendency with respect to being-at-home, and who finds herself, as a result, vulnerable and even incapacitated when attempting to emerge into the public arena as a fully participatory agent. I consider this thesis in light of the fact that since World War I agoraphobia has been diagnosed significantly more in women than in men; indeed, one study found women to be 89% more likely than men to suffer from agoraphobia. I conclude that agoraphobia is a disorder that stands as an emblematic expression of the ongoing pathology of being a woman in contemporary society–a disorder that reflects that even today women belong to a political world in which they are not able to feel properly at-home. (shrink)

This book is an invitation to academic administrators, at every level, to engage in reflection on the ethical dimensions of their working lives.

Within the context of health and social care education, attempts to define ‘scholarship’ have increasingly transcended traditional academic conceptions of the term. While acknowledging that many applied disciplines call for a kind of ‘actionable knowledge’ that is also not separate from its ethical dimensions, engagement in the caring professions in particular provides an interesting exemplar that raises questions about the nature and practice of ‘actionable knowledge’: how is such knowledge from different domains integrated and sustained? This paper is theoretical and (...) wishes to outline some philosophical ideas that may be important when considering the characteristics of the kind of scholarship for caring practices that draw on deep resources for creativity and integration. Firstly, there is an attempt to clarify the nature of scholarly practice by drawing on Aristotle’s notion of ‘phronesis’ . Secondly, a more meditative approach to the integration of knowledge, action and ethics is highlighted. Finally, its implications for scholarship are introduced, in which scholarly integration may best be served by more contemplative ways of being and thinking. Drawing on Heidegger and Gendlin, we consider the challenges of contemplative thinking for pursuing scholarly practice. We articulate contemplative thinking as an unspecialized mode of being that is given to human beings as an intimate source of creativity. The sense in which unspecialization can be cultivated and practised is discussed. (shrink)

[full article, abstract in English; abstract in Lithuanian] Constructionists operationalize a powerful notion they share with constructivists: individual learning is facilitated by building models of specific ideas, concepts, methods, objects, environments, feelings, dreams, memories and sounds using the learner’s current stock of knowledge. Constructionists do this by building models or artifacts that can be externally manipulated, interrogated by their builder, and verbally shared with others. Constructionists believe that new knowledge is created during these discussions. Constructionism is rich with heuristic methods (...) for both finding and constructing artifacts and for discussing these artifacts privately and publicly. Constructionists argue that both constructing and discussing are necessary for deep sense-making. This paper describes one specific constructionist learning method: visual modeling. It illustrates one educator’s approach, developed in the classroom over a 40-year period. It references the relevant literature; describes its pedagogic approach, materials and outcomes; and it offers a step-by-step example of one student’s thinking process. Finally, it presents – in appropriate narrative form – 15 arguments why the visual component extends the constructionist project and should be integrated into more educational programs. (shrink)

The effect of early emotional memories have been one of the most researched topics in modern scientific psychology. On the other hand, rigorous qualitative studies have been relatively rare, investigating the lived consequences of early emotional memories. The purpose of this paper is to report on some human scientific research results on the phenomenon, the lived persistent psychological meaning of early emotional memories. The study utilized Giorgi's descriptive phenomenological psychological method. A general psychological structure was discovered indicating constituents such as, (...) the vividness of early emotional memories; emotional needs coping strategies; everyday and life choices; as well as personal values attached to the meaning of an object that was present during the early emotional situation . The results might have implications for human service professionals in that they can contribute to a human scientific foundation in terms of understanding the persistent psychological meaning of early emotional memories as well as opening up for new venues of research on phenomena related to human memory, personality, and life-span developmental psychology. (shrink)

Creativity: what might this mean for art and art educators in the creative economies of globalisation? The task of this discussion is to look at the state of creativity and its role in education, in particular art education, and to seek some understanding of the register of creativity, how it is shaped, and how legitimated in the globalised world dominated by input-output, means-end, economically driven thinking, expectations and demands. With the help of Heidegger some crucial questions are raised, such as: (...) How can art maintain its creative ontological and epistemological potential in the creative economies of globalisation? Is it possible for art and the creative arts to act as a process of ‘revealing’ and ‘becoming’ and ‘throwing light’ on the world while working within the market economies of innovation and entrepreneurship where creativity has become a generalised discourse? What matters in this discussion is to find a way to argue for the sustainability of art education as a creative mode of enquiry through which self and the world may be better understood, identity might be realised as difference and being-in-time might be possible. (shrink)

Philosophical anthropology aims to discover what makes us human, but it has produced accounts that exclude some members of our species. It relies often on a non-naturalistic “philosophy of consciousness” and locates humanity in the cognitive capacity to objectively represent things, to reason teleologically and use tools, to use symbols and language, or to be self-conscious and question existence. This work pursues an alternative, thoroughly naturalistic philosophical anthropology in the tradition of Arnold Gehlen. Combining Gehlen’s theory of our behaviorally-detached and (...) culturally-determined impulses with Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s views on intersubjectivity, affect, sexuality, and social institutions, the present work locates the human within the unique structure of human feeling. This produces a truly inclusive account of “the human as the other” or Homo alter. The human is deeply and thoroughly dependent on affective, bodily, communicative bonds, in which others appear as sources of meaning, norms, pleasure, and approbation and disapprobation. This socio-biological account of the human makes institutionality central to our form of life but rejects any political anthropology that attempts to use human nature to prescribe a necessary form to institutions such as the home. Such a social and affective account of the human produces a novel approach to the affect of shame as the feeling of institutional rejection. Ultimately, this work uses philosophical anthropology to combat dehumanization. Our unique form of dependency on others and institutions is present, for example, in infants and the severely disabled who may not possess the forms of consciousness and cognition that traditionally are identified with being human. (shrink)

Philosophers and artists consider the relevance of Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy for understanding art and aesthetic experience. This collection of essays brings together diverse but interrelated perspectives on art and perception based on the philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Although Merleau-Ponty focused almost exclusively on painting in his writings on aesthetics, this collection also considers poetry, literary works, theater, and relationships between art and science. In addition to philosophers, the contributors include a painter, a photographer, a musicologist, and an architect. This widened (...) scope offers important philosophical benefits, testing and providing evidence for the empirical applicability of Merleau-Ponty’s aesthetic writings. The central argument is that for Merleau-Ponty the account of perception is also an account of art and vice versa. In the philosopher’s writings, art and perception thus intertwine necessarily rather than contingently such that they can only be distinguished by abstraction. As a result, his account of perception and his account of art are organic, interdependent, and dynamic. The contributors examine various aspects of this intertwining across different artistic media, each ingeniously revealing an original perspective on this intertwining. (shrink)

Translated from: W.V.O.Quine, W. H. O. (1986): Philosophy of Logic. Second Edition. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 47-61.

With rapid changes in urban living today, peoples’ behavioural patterns and spatial practices undergo a constant process of adaptation and negotiation. Using “house” as a laboratory and everyday life and spatial relations of residents as a framework of analysis, the paper examines the spatial planning concepts in traditional and contemporary Iranian architecture and the associated socio-cultural practices. Discussions are drawn upon from a pilot study conducted in the city of Kerman, to investigate ways in which contemporary housing solutions can better (...) cater to the continually changing socio-cultural lifestyles of residents. Data collection for the study involved a series of participatory workshops and employed creative visual research methods, participant observation and semi structured interviews to examine the interlacing of everyday socio-spatial relations and changing perception of identity, belonging, socio-cultural and religious values and conflict. The inferences from the study showcases the emerging social and cultural needs and practices of people manifested through the complex relationship between residents, the places in which they live, and its spatial planning and organisation. For a better understanding of this complex relationship, the paper argues the need for resituating spatiality as a socio-cultural paradigm. (shrink)

In this article, we use an entry to an international architectural student competition on future care to explore how social norms about older bodies may be challenged by designs that are sensitive to the spatial contexts within which we age. The power of the My Home design by Witham and Wilkins derives from its hand-drawn aesthetic and thus we consider the architects’ insistence on drawing as a challenge to the clear and unambiguous image-making typically associated with digitally aided architectural designs. (...) The hand-drawn images of My Home prompt a focus on care as enacted through the relations between material environments and things, and the atmospheric qualities these relations evoke. Throughout our analysis, we argue for greater attention to the ways in which embodied practices, everyday affects and materialities can be represented within architectural design, and the role of hand drawing as a creative methodology in this process. (shrink)

In our culture, intelligence, emotions and embodied intuitions continue to be seen as separate categories. The body is regarded as a medium of identity as well as social and sexual appeal, but neglected as the ground of embodied existence and silent knowledge, or the full understanding of the human condition. Prevailing educational and pedagogic practices also still separate the mental and intellectual capacities from emotions and the senses, and the multifarious dimensions of human embodiment.

This paper considers the role of myth and phenomenology in Pierre Schaeffer’s research into music and sound, and argues that engagement with these themes allows us to rethink the legacy and contemporary value of Schaeffer’s thought in sound studies. In light of critique of Schaeffer’s project, in particular that developed by Brian Kane and Schaeffer’s own apparent self-disavowal, this paper returns to Schaeffer’s early remarks on the “myth of the seashell” in order to examine the conditions of this critique. While (...) Kane argues that Schaeffer’s recourse to myth, coupled with his adoption of Husserlian phenomenology, leads to a closure of his inquiry and a failure to accommodate the contingency of his position, this paper argues that Schaeffer’s myth of the seashell brings into focus an open-ended, motivating phenomenological problem concerning subjectivity and objectivity that runs through his thought. Drawing on the philosophical work of Gaston Bachelard and Gilles Deleuze, this paper considers the epistemological significance of this moment in Schaeffer’s thought, suggesting a “problematic” account of the myth of the seashell that puts Schaeffer into conversation with contemporary work in epistemology. (shrink)

Many great authors claim that reading literature can expand your phenomenal imagination and allow you to imagine experiences you have never had. How is this possible? Your phenomenal imagination is constrained by your phenomenal concepts, which are in turn constrained by the phenomenology of your own actual past experiences. Literature could expand your phenomenal imagination, then, by giving you new phenomenal concepts. This paper explains how this can happen. Literature can direct your attention to previously unnoticed phenomenal properties of your (...) own past experiences, as brought to mind by involuntary memory. This process gives you the opportunity to notice those phenomenal properties for the first time, and so also to form phenomenal concepts of those properties. Forming a new phenomenal concept strictly expands the range of your phenomenal imagination. It gives you the capacity to imagine more than you could have before, including certain specific kinds of experience that you yourself have never enjoyed firsthand. Literature’s capacity to expand your phenomenal imagination in this way is central to its social, moral, and epistemic value. (shrink)

Where do computer games "happen"? The articles collected in this pioneering volume explore the categories of "space," "place," and "territory" to lay the groundwork for the study of spatiality in games.

This chapter considers the presence, in digital games, of experiences of dwelling. Starting with an engagement with the philosopher Edward S. Casey's distinction between hestial and hermetic spatial modes, the chapter argues that the player's spatial engagement with digital game worlds has tended to align with the hermetic pole, emphasizing movement, traversal and exploration. By contrast, hestial spatial practices, characterized by centrality, lingering and return, are far less prevalent both in digital games themselves and in discussions on spatiality in the (...) game studies discourse. To counter this lack, this chapter draws upon philosophical work on space by Casey, Martin Heidegger, Yi-Fu Tuan and Christian Norberg-Schulz, using these as a conceptual lens to identify spatial structures and practices in digital games that diverge from the hermetic mode. Attention is paid to games that invite pausing and lingering in place, games where the player's relation to place is structured around practices of building, the phenomenology of home and dwelling in games, and familiarity and identity as experiential characteristics of being at home. Minecraft and Animal Crossing: New Leaf are examined in detail as case studies, though the chapter also refers to examples from other games. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the phenomenon of a felt sense of the concrete other. Although the importance of this phenomenon is recognised in the contemporary discussion on intercorporeality, it has not been subjected to systematic phenomenological analysis. I argue that the felt sense of the other is an aspect of intercorporeal body memory in so far as it is a habituation to something like the concrete other’s expressive style. Because it is inherently a sensory phenomenon, I speak of an (...) embodied sensorium of the other. I illustrate the phenomenon through contrasting case-vignettes taken from research in early parental bereavement. Based on this, I identify five modalities that outline the fundamental contours of a sensorium and specify that in their intermodal and synesthetic concretion they account for the felt sense of the other. Finally, I argue that the existential importance of the phenomenon is rooted in the distributed nature of my sense of self and self-familiarity. To illustrate this, I draw parallels between the felt sense of the concrete other and the felt sense of home and suggest that though there are also distinct differences between the two phenomena, they are rooted in the same underlying existential need for feeling-at-home in the world. (shrink)

A neo-phenomenological and atmospherological approach, mainly based on a first-person perspective, seems perfectly entitled to consider subjective and collective well-being as the starting point for a philosophical reflection. The question is, however, whether and how well-being, also as an atmosphere, can be really investigated and verified. The paper examines many traditional roblems hindering the research and suggests to analyze well-being from a pathic-atmospheric point of view. It therefore focuses especially on the idea of “flow”, wonders how much our well-being depends (...) on the felt-bodily resonances triggered by atmospheric situations, considers the probable parallels between the aesthetic-phenomenologic notion of “atmosphere” and the sociological one of “climate”, finally, underlines the need of an atmospheric competence that is able to partly immunize against today’s widespread manipulative atmospherization. (shrink)

This article looks at the politics of successive Conservative governments in Britain in the 1980s and ‘90s through the lens of the increasing politicisation of Paganisms in that period. A wave of moral panics in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90s concerning marginal communities – such as Ravers, New Age travellers and anti-road protesters – and their ‘riotous assemblies’, culminated in the Conservative Government of John Major enacting The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994. This was seen by (...) these communities as legislation against alternative lifestyles and, in some respects, an infringement of spiritual freedom. Using the case study of technoshamanism – a Pagan meeting of ‘rave’ culture and neo-shamanism – I wish to examine how the political and Pagan religious landscapes of ‘80s and ‘90s Britain intersected and led to politically engaged forms of Pagan practice often centred around grassroots lifestyle and environmental politics. This will be explored with especial reference to the politicisation of The Spiral Tribe, a technoshamanic collective of the early ‘90s, and their increasing involvement in resisting the 1994 Act and promotion of campaigns such as Reclaim the Streets. (shrink)

Given that one of the defining elements of capitalist society is the ubiquity of forms of abstraction through which social relations are mediated, it is not surprising that a generalised ‘reproach of abstraction’ has taken on a critical orthodoxy within social theory and the humanities. Many of these attacks against a pervasive culture of abstraction have an obvious resonance with longstanding critiques of the abstractions inherent in law. This article explores the critique of the power of abstraction that is a (...) central theme in Henri Lefebvre’s depiction of the ‘abstract space’ of contemporary capitalism. In doing so, it will be emphasised that Lefebvre’s work is not primarily concerned with the rejection of abstraction per se, but with understanding the relationships between dominant forms of abstraction and concrete social practices. Of particular interest here is Lefebvre’s reformulation of the concept of concrete abstraction which extends his work beyond a polemical dismissal of the violence of abstraction into broader theoretical debates about the role of the abstract in the reproduction of social relations. Building on this aspect of Lefebvre’s work, I will argue that the concept of concrete abstraction can provide a means of understanding the relationships between the concrete and the abstract in existing juridico-political relations. (shrink)

The “Home” is ideologically understood as a place of safety and refuge. Such an account cloaks violence against women. The voices of battered women can disrupt that dominant construction of the space of the home, a construction typified by the work of Gaston Bachelard. The space that Bachelard presupposes and theorizes as given is in fact being-produced, cleaned, and organized by people who themselves may not find in it any solace or respite.

This phenomenological investigation aims to explore the lived experience of being vegan or vegetarian in a society and culture that is primarily non-vegetarian. As members of a unique minority group, vegans and vegetarians can sometimes be misunderstood by non-vegetarians and stereotyped as judgmental or difficult to deal with. Living with this type of misunderstanding from others can lead to feelings such as worry, loneliness, and fear. As such, the use of phenomenological inquiry is well suited to uncover the lived experience (...) this phenomenon in such a way that no other method of inquiry could. The author brings forward themes that emerged from in depth conversations with two vegan/vegetarian participants, and draws from her own personal experiences as a vegetarian to supplement the data and further uncover the phenomenon. Themes are brought forward through the use of, among other works, Hyppolite’s and Bachelard’s descriptions of “inside vs. outside” and van Manen and Levering’s notion of secrecy. (shrink)

Organization emerges as reality only through language. Transformation is such an emergence and it must get over the present context. A descriptive or implicative language fails to transcend the context. Linguistic suggestion of imageries and linguistic communion through imagination take departure from the present context and emerge as the new pleasurable transformed reality of organization. Linguistic holds the key to organizational transformation.

“Home” is well known from everyday experience, plays a crucial role in all kinds of narratives about human life, but is hardly ever systematically dealt with in the philosophy of medicine and health care. The notion of home is ambiguous, is often used in a metaphorical way, and is closely related to concepts such as house and dwelling. In this paper the phenomenon of home is explored by means of some phenomenological writings of Heidegger, Bollnow, Bachelard and Levinas. Common in (...) their views is that being at home and dwelling mean something more fundamental than an activity we do along with other activities, such as working and travelling. Dwelling, building a house and being at home are fundamental aspects of human existence. Being human is dwelling. While exploring the relevance of this phenomenological perspective for medical theory and practice, the focus is on the care of people suffering from dementia. (shrink)

The richness and subtlety of the felt presence phenomenon introduced by “Felt Presence: the uncanny encounters with the numinous Other” (Solomonova et al., this issue) offers a challenge to the emerging field of new media. How to create a computer-mediated environment which can engender a spontaneous, creative, and individualized experience such as felt presence? The Other experiment described in this paper explores the possibility of unfolding phenomenological and poetic aura of felt presence experience in a media-rich environment with liminal stimulation, (...) dosed carefully, and open to interpretation. (shrink)

This essay engages ways in which the manifestation of ‘world’ occurs in poetry specifically through images, and how we can conceive of the imagination in this regard without reducing the imagination to a mimetic faculty of consciousness subordinate to cognition. Continental thought in the last century offers rich resources for this study. The notion of a ‘world’ is related to the poetic image in ways fundamental to the Heidegger’s theory of language, and may be seen in Continental poetics following Heidegger, (...) including Blanchot’s examination of poetry in his account of the space of literature. By means of images, I shall demonstrate, poetic language is exemplary in relation to ‘world’ in two ways. (1) Images, poetically arranged, generate and open up a sense or experience of a world, specific to that poem, for its reader. Poetic images then, exhibit a generative evocation of world. (2) Through images, a poem may evoke the way in which space and time are inhabited as a world of human dwelling in an ontologically or existentially meaningful way. The relation of images to world is, then, an illumination or a disclosure of world. The first of these relations remains, to a large extent, immanent to the poem, but may be seen as an analogue of the essentially human experience of inhabiting a world. The second relation transcends the poem and relates the poem immediately to the existential framework of human dwelling. (shrink)

The title of this paper might evoke claustrophobic associations. In other words, architecture in a very immediate sense can affect our behavior and feelings. In more mediated ways, architecture is also capable of influencing humans and putting their environment into perspective. Consider, for example, how a penthouse apartment can literally elevate people’s emotions and unfold a new perspective on city life, which some people are willing to pay millions of dollars to attain. In this paper I will explore how architecture (...) frames human experience from a philosophical point of view. My aim is to offer key elements of a new typology of architecture. For that purpose I am going to reflect and expand on key insights into technology of one of the funding fathers of contemporary philosophy of technology, Don Ihde. Through a life time, Ihde has been probing and investigating the relation between humans and their world as it is mediated through technology. In doing so he has concentrated on examining and understanding the role of scientific instruments. This paper is dedicated to showing how Ihde’s significant postphenomenological concepts not only can be translated to another domain and serve a better understanding of architecture, but also how his work can help us to relate to architecture in multiple constructive ways. The succeeding experimental translations of Ihde’s understanding of technology to architecture are also meant as a guide to design more adequate and fascinating built environments. I will begin with a broad overview of Ihde’s postphenomenological project; subsequently I shall endeavor to translate this work onto architecture through a number of case-studies, some of which are detailed and others less so. (shrink)

Though “dwelling” is more commonly associated with Heidegger’s philosophy than with that of Merleau-Ponty, “being-at-home” is in fact integral to Merleau-Ponty’s thinking. I consider the notion of home as it relates to Merleau-Ponty’s more familiar notions of the “lived body” and the “level,” and, in particular, I consider how the unique intertwining of activity and passivity that characterizes our being-at-home is essential to our nature as free beings. I argue that while being-at-home is essentially an experience of passivity—i.e., one that (...) rests in the background of our experience and provides a support and structure for our life that goes largely unnoticed and that is significantly beyond our “conscious” control—being-at-home is also a way of being to which we attain . This analysis of home reveals important psychological insights into the nature of our freedom as well as into the nature of the development of our adult ways of coping and behaving. (shrink)

This paper marks the launch of a new accounting and business ethics Web project called Tender Nation. The objective of the site is to provide an emotionally supportive resource and community for the discussion of accounting and business ethics issues by accounting practitioners and accounting students. The paper explains the rationale behind the development of the site and is split into five sections. Section one develops a short critique of the development of the Web and discusses the extent to which (...) it provides an opportunity for critical engagement in the economic sphere. Section two reviews the Web based accounting and business ethics resources currently available and draws on some well established ethical theory to explain how the objectives of Tender Nation differ from other Web based attempts to critically and ethically engage with the economic sphere. Section three provides an outline of the structure and content of the site. Section four presents a survey of students'' initial responses to the Web site and the concluding section discusses plans to develop the project further. (shrink)