An epic project in both size and purview, Peter Sloterdijk's three-volume, 2,500-page Spheres is the late-twentieth-century bookend to Heidegger's Being and Time. Rejecting the century's predominant philosophical focus on temporality, Sloterdijk, a self-described "student of the air," reinterprets the history of Western metaphysics as an inherently spatial and immunological project, from the discovery of self (bubble) to the exploration of world (globe) to the poetics of plurality (foam). Exploring macro- and micro-space from the Greek agora to the contemporary urban apartment, Sloterdijk is able to synthesize, with immense erudition, the spatial theories of Aristotle, René Descartes, Gaston Bachelard, Walter Benjamin, and Georges Bataille into a morphology of shared, or multipolar, dwelling--identifying the question of being as one bound up with the aerial technology of architectonics and anthropogenesis.Sloterdijk describes Bubbles, the first volume of Spheres, as a general theory of the structures that allow couplings--or as the book's original intended subtitle put it, an "archeology of the intimate." Bubbles includes a wide array of images, not to illustrate Sloterdijk's discourse, but to offer a spatial and visual "parallel narrative" to his exploration of bubbles.Written over the course of a decade, the Spheres trilogy has waited another decade for its much-anticipated English translation from Semiotext(e). Volumes II, Globes, and III, Foam, will be published in the coming seasons.
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"Peter Sloterdijk is one of the most extraordinary philosophers working today. No Enlightenment truisms remain undisturbed by his joyous and polyphonic investigations into the meaning of the spherical. The appearance of Volume 1, Bubbles, is a major event that will finally allow the English-speaking world to experience the many dimensions of his thinking which is a toolbox for art and architecture." -- Hans Ulrich Obrist
"Peter Sloterdijk's expansive trilogy Sphären ( Spheres I-III, 1998, 1999,2004) explores myriad spaces -- from the microsphere of the uterus to themacrosphere of the nation-state -- that are fundamental to the formation of human life but often overlooked by philosophers. At once polemical and holistic in approach, Sloterdijk allows us to come to terms with the ever-retooled systems that structure our lives." -- Hal Foster
"It is about time that the English-speaking world begin to appreciate what is, without question, the most important work in philosophy of nature to appear since the irruption of the ecological crisis at the forefront of our consciousness and political order. Many naturalists, activists, political scientists, and ecologists have been nibbling at the notion of nature. But Peter Sloterdijk, in this first volume of his giant trilogy, goes much further and deeper since he renews what it is to be thrown Œin¹ the world by totally renewing what it means to talk about the natural and social sciences as well as the humanities. It is only if we profit from Sloterdijk's infectious concept of 'envelopes' and 'spheres' that we might at last begin to prepare ourselves for living with and in Gaia instead of against and out of her." -- Bruno Latour
"... Bubbles is as much an essential guide to modern space as it is a philosophical epic about dwelling and thinking." -- Brian Dillon, The Guardian
"[ Bubbles] is perhaps best read as a long philosophical poem, powerfully expressive of the modern experience of disorientation and loneliness, wrenching itself into bizarre shapes in its imperfect attempt to conjure an ancient wholeness."--Adam Kirsch, Times Literary Supplement
About the Author
Peter Sloterdijk (b. 1947) is one of the best known and widely read German intellectuals writing today. His 1983 publication of Critique of Cynical Reason became the best-selling German book of philosophy since World War II. He became president of the State Academy of Design at the Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe in 2001 and has been cohost of a discussion program, Das Philosophische Quartett (Philosophical Quartet) on German television since 2002.
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
The first volume of Peter Sloterdijk's theoretical opus Spheres is now available in English translation from Semiotexte and is due out shortly. This volume, entitled Bubbles, investigates those types of social spheres which Sloterdijk terms "microspheres," which have to do with personal, one-to-one human relationships, especially of the amniotic kind. The second volume, Globes, articulates his idea of "macrospheres," or the cosmological containers inside which humanity has been situated until about the 15th century, while the final volume, Foams, articulates the fate of spheres in the Modern world, in which each individual inhabits his or her own sphere, all of which rub up against one another to create a kind of social "foam."
The reader familiar with esoteric traditions will at once recognize that the first volume updates the old microcosmic idea of the personal destiny and fate of the human soul, while the second volume is a recasting of what the Neoplatonists once termed the anima mundi or World Soul. The third volume, however, is entirely non-traditional, since the idea of each individual occupying his own sphere is rather unique to Western Modernity, a society that specializes, one might say, in generating lonely individuals.
Bubbles explores, then, this idea of the microsphere, that is to say, one on one human relationships. Sloterdijk makes the rather startling assertion that we are actually never alone psychologically. Even in the womb, the existence of a Levinasian Other was actually the placenta, according to Sloterdijk, and the absence of the placenta leaves a kind of etheric scar on the human psyche such that it is like Orpheus always yearning for his lost Eurydice. The ancient myth of the double -- in Egypt, the ka, or in Rome, the genius -- is an attempt to account for this missing piece of the human psyche. This is a startling, and very fresh idea, to say the least.
Another microsphere is the personal relationship between the mother and the embryo in the womb, especially forming what Sloterdijk calls a sonosphere, in which the embryo can, indeed, hear sounds going on outside the womb. There are relationships formed by lovers, another kind of microsphere; and twins, especially mythical twins like Christ and Judas, who form interfacial dyads.
The book opens with a sustained meditation on Yahweh's creation of Adam as a clay vessel into which Yahweh breathes life. We are, according to Sloterdijk, always part of a breathed commune, for the gods are forever pictured in ancient myth breathing life into humans, who are therefore always conceived as dyadic: man plus God. But then, in our relationships with the Other, we are always, in one way or another, breathed upon, and are therefore constantly in an intimate microspheric interinvolvement with someone else. Sloterdijk calls this the "Breathed Commune."
The book ends, symmetrically, with a meditation on Mary's giving birth to Christ, as an image of the mother-child dyad that brings the reader up to the edge of the Renaissance, when the major spheric disintegration took place once Copernicus et. al. started to question the notion of being encased inside whirling cosmic macrospheres. When those spheres were shattered, all hell, did indeed, break loose, and humanity was set on the path toward Nietzsche's annunciation of the death of God as a disguised cry that the human being now, for the first time ever, faced a gigantic cosmos alone and unprotected by any metaphysical immune system. Hence, the anxieties of the 20th century, its chaos of wars and its profusion of sages, each of whom desperately attempts to offer a pharmaceutical balm to soothe the anxiety of being-in-the-world, as Heidegger put it.
Sloterdijk, indeed, picks up from where Heidegger left off, for it was Heidegger's primary task to situate the lonely philosophical Ego into a specific and very concrete world, where he is always already engaged in doing something, thus putting an end to the subject-object dichotomy that had haunted philosophy since Descartes. Sloterdijk picks up the tradition of embedding the individual in a context by saying that not only is the human already in the world doing something, but he is specifically inside a container of some sort that functions as an extension of the mother womb. He or she is always involved with someone -- even when no one appears to be present -- inside an invisible environment of one ontological sort or another. Ontology, then, is applied immunology.
If it is the task of the artist, as both Heidegger and McLuhan pointed out, to make invisible environments perceptible through art, Sloterdijk, as a theoretician, is performing something very similar, for he is drawing our attention to the invisible worlds that very often surround us without our even noticing them, including missing human Others.
Bubbles is a brilliant work from a thinker whose main engagement has been to build bridges between postmodern thought and the kinds of Modernist macronarratives that had been typical of the German mentality prior to World War II. Sloterdijk, unlike most of the French theoreticians, is not comfortable tossing the history of great German metaphysics aside in favor of deconstructing them and thus neutralizing their authoritarian validity. He wants to retain what was great in that tradition -- namely, its penchant for metaphysics -- in an age that no longer gives metaphysical thought much validity (at least, not in the academic world). Consequently, metaphysics has suffered the fate of being tossed into the murky and intellectually irresponsible bargain bin of the New Age, where such ideas are treated with rampant anti-intellectualism and scorn for cultivated and reasoned discourse generally. New Agers can neither write well, nor think clearly, but Sloterdijk stands, for the thoughtful person who remains hesitant, in spite of the dazzling profusion and brilliance of French po-mo thought, to just discard such ideas without further ado. After all, the entire history of human civilization was built out of metaphysical ideas. Surely, they must have had some validity to them?
Admittedly, the danger of adhering to them -- Nazi mysticism is a classic case -- can lead to annihilation wars when they are taken dogmatically or connected to political contexts. However, kept safely out of the arena of politics, metaphysics is surely food for the soul, capable of enlivening and expanding its horizons without necessarily dimming the mind's intellectual capacities.
In sum: for those readers who like esoteric ideas and are simultaneously interested in postmodern thinking, Sloterdijk is your man. Habermas, predictably, has accused him of regressing to murky German metaphysics, but I don't think that is the case: rather, Sloterdijk enters the arena of murky ideas with a very clear and sober intellect polished by his thorough immersion in French postmodern theory, so that it is an entirely different experience from reading Spengler, say, or Wagner's intellectually torturous essays. Postmodern thinking sharpens the intellect and enables it to discern valuable metaphysical ideas from useless ones due to its inherent skepticism. In fact, anyone with a sober head who is interested in metaphysics should soak themselves in postmodern theory first; then go back, once one's mental immune system has been built up, to retrieve from the midden heap what looks like it might still be usable.
I think the idea of micro and macrospheres is still a good and useful tool for illuminating cultural problems and I am glad that someone like Sloterdijk has taken the necessary time and trouble to guide us through them from an altogether new, and very valuable, vantage point.
I look forward to the second volume.
SEE ALSO MY YOUTUBE VIDEO "PETER SLOTERDIJK'S SPHERES I: BUBBLES by John David Ebert Part 1: 1/2"
--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion" (McFarland Books, 2011)
The reader familiar with esoteric traditions will at once recognize that the first volume updates the old microcosmic idea of the personal destiny and fate of the human soul, while the second volume is a recasting of what the Neoplatonists once termed the anima mundi or World Soul. The third volume, however, is entirely non-traditional, since the idea of each individual occupying his own sphere is rather unique to Western Modernity, a society that specializes, one might say, in generating lonely individuals.
Bubbles explores, then, this idea of the microsphere, that is to say, one on one human relationships. Sloterdijk makes the rather startling assertion that we are actually never alone psychologically. Even in the womb, the existence of a Levinasian Other was actually the placenta, according to Sloterdijk, and the absence of the placenta leaves a kind of etheric scar on the human psyche such that it is like Orpheus always yearning for his lost Eurydice. The ancient myth of the double -- in Egypt, the ka, or in Rome, the genius -- is an attempt to account for this missing piece of the human psyche. This is a startling, and very fresh idea, to say the least.
Another microsphere is the personal relationship between the mother and the embryo in the womb, especially forming what Sloterdijk calls a sonosphere, in which the embryo can, indeed, hear sounds going on outside the womb. There are relationships formed by lovers, another kind of microsphere; and twins, especially mythical twins like Christ and Judas, who form interfacial dyads.
The book opens with a sustained meditation on Yahweh's creation of Adam as a clay vessel into which Yahweh breathes life. We are, according to Sloterdijk, always part of a breathed commune, for the gods are forever pictured in ancient myth breathing life into humans, who are therefore always conceived as dyadic: man plus God. But then, in our relationships with the Other, we are always, in one way or another, breathed upon, and are therefore constantly in an intimate microspheric interinvolvement with someone else. Sloterdijk calls this the "Breathed Commune."
The book ends, symmetrically, with a meditation on Mary's giving birth to Christ, as an image of the mother-child dyad that brings the reader up to the edge of the Renaissance, when the major spheric disintegration took place once Copernicus et. al. started to question the notion of being encased inside whirling cosmic macrospheres. When those spheres were shattered, all hell, did indeed, break loose, and humanity was set on the path toward Nietzsche's annunciation of the death of God as a disguised cry that the human being now, for the first time ever, faced a gigantic cosmos alone and unprotected by any metaphysical immune system. Hence, the anxieties of the 20th century, its chaos of wars and its profusion of sages, each of whom desperately attempts to offer a pharmaceutical balm to soothe the anxiety of being-in-the-world, as Heidegger put it.
Sloterdijk, indeed, picks up from where Heidegger left off, for it was Heidegger's primary task to situate the lonely philosophical Ego into a specific and very concrete world, where he is always already engaged in doing something, thus putting an end to the subject-object dichotomy that had haunted philosophy since Descartes. Sloterdijk picks up the tradition of embedding the individual in a context by saying that not only is the human already in the world doing something, but he is specifically inside a container of some sort that functions as an extension of the mother womb. He or she is always involved with someone -- even when no one appears to be present -- inside an invisible environment of one ontological sort or another. Ontology, then, is applied immunology.
If it is the task of the artist, as both Heidegger and McLuhan pointed out, to make invisible environments perceptible through art, Sloterdijk, as a theoretician, is performing something very similar, for he is drawing our attention to the invisible worlds that very often surround us without our even noticing them, including missing human Others.
Bubbles is a brilliant work from a thinker whose main engagement has been to build bridges between postmodern thought and the kinds of Modernist macronarratives that had been typical of the German mentality prior to World War II. Sloterdijk, unlike most of the French theoreticians, is not comfortable tossing the history of great German metaphysics aside in favor of deconstructing them and thus neutralizing their authoritarian validity. He wants to retain what was great in that tradition -- namely, its penchant for metaphysics -- in an age that no longer gives metaphysical thought much validity (at least, not in the academic world). Consequently, metaphysics has suffered the fate of being tossed into the murky and intellectually irresponsible bargain bin of the New Age, where such ideas are treated with rampant anti-intellectualism and scorn for cultivated and reasoned discourse generally. New Agers can neither write well, nor think clearly, but Sloterdijk stands, for the thoughtful person who remains hesitant, in spite of the dazzling profusion and brilliance of French po-mo thought, to just discard such ideas without further ado. After all, the entire history of human civilization was built out of metaphysical ideas. Surely, they must have had some validity to them?
Admittedly, the danger of adhering to them -- Nazi mysticism is a classic case -- can lead to annihilation wars when they are taken dogmatically or connected to political contexts. However, kept safely out of the arena of politics, metaphysics is surely food for the soul, capable of enlivening and expanding its horizons without necessarily dimming the mind's intellectual capacities.
In sum: for those readers who like esoteric ideas and are simultaneously interested in postmodern thinking, Sloterdijk is your man. Habermas, predictably, has accused him of regressing to murky German metaphysics, but I don't think that is the case: rather, Sloterdijk enters the arena of murky ideas with a very clear and sober intellect polished by his thorough immersion in French postmodern theory, so that it is an entirely different experience from reading Spengler, say, or Wagner's intellectually torturous essays. Postmodern thinking sharpens the intellect and enables it to discern valuable metaphysical ideas from useless ones due to its inherent skepticism. In fact, anyone with a sober head who is interested in metaphysics should soak themselves in postmodern theory first; then go back, once one's mental immune system has been built up, to retrieve from the midden heap what looks like it might still be usable.
I think the idea of micro and macrospheres is still a good and useful tool for illuminating cultural problems and I am glad that someone like Sloterdijk has taken the necessary time and trouble to guide us through them from an altogether new, and very valuable, vantage point.
I look forward to the second volume.
SEE ALSO MY YOUTUBE VIDEO "PETER SLOTERDIJK'S SPHERES I: BUBBLES by John David Ebert Part 1: 1/2"
--John David Ebert, author of "The New Media Invasion" (McFarland Books, 2011)
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Part theory, part manual, part love story and soul-history, Peter Sloterdijk's work "Bubbles" is a high octane masterpiece. It is a membrane that breathes. This meticulous and elegant translation by Wieland Hoban will be a resource for decades. In what follows, I'll try to paraphrase what I see is at stake and provide a few supporting examples from the book, in hopes of enticing you to this profound work.
In the preface to the Spheres trilogy as a whole, Sloterdijk warns: "let no one enter who is unwilling to praise transference or to refute loneliness." A cogent presentation of this material ought to begin by unpacking this double inscription. Together, they indicate these two ontological tasks, both in terms of the position or whereabouts of the modern "individual": (1) Refute loneliness: Expose us to the dual or doubled-up nature of self, the plural aspect of being, or to a subjectivity that is resonant. From the discussion of the Greek genius to mesmerism; from Giotto's painting of inter-facial space to Magritte's tree of infinite recognition; from Odysseus and the Siren's Song to the idea that, "as soon as breath exists, there are two breathing," this primary dyad that we are forms the bubbling center of microsphereology. Sloterdijk does not revise our notion of the self; he exposes its premises, and reminds us that we begin shared. (2) Praise transference: Expose us to these spaces of resonance that constitute our being-wholly-in-relation, being as "in-relation." To praise transference is to praise the transferential nature of my being: I am only in transmission, I "am" transmission. I'm here so that sense can bounce and rebound off of me, in the infinite relating of shared truths, or the infinite creation of interiors. As Sloterdijk writes, "The limits of my capacity for transference are the limits of my world." In other words, the creation of a world and the sharing of the world are very similar. Ultimately, to praise transference simply means to make room for another (in me or outside me).
These two tasks are supported by countless intimacy-models (biological, therapeutic, theological, interfacial, poetic) that are weaved together chapter by chapter and across the trilogy, which show how the self/individual is preceded by "nobjective," resonance-based with- and in- relationships. Bubbles explores various spherical models that figure strong relationships of mutual intrication and coinherence. This "introduction to a medial poetics of existence" compiles histories, references, and revelations that have animated us since time immemorial. And you can tell that Sloterdijk himself loves what he recounts.
The most vital model of spheric resonance exists between mother and child, who are each "poles of a dynamic in-between." Drawing equally from Lao Tzu's birth-myth and Thomas Macho's research into the uterine-amniotic environment, Sloterdijk unveils the model of an original biune bubble that is ternary in structure: mother-child and their shared medium (blood, air, sonic space). One-and-two is always already three because, when each one is IN the other without exteriority, each one IS the dynamic in-between. Each one is its augmentation coming from elsewhere. Each one is the other's partner AND ALSO the medial bond between them. Each of them are themselves, the other, and the in-between medium as such: blood. Blood (like words) is the gift of relation before establishes a system of relations (mother-child, author-reader). Likewise, inter-uterine listening and filtering begins long before there is some "one" to listen. Mother and child are relational, dyadic, and dual because before they are themselves they are relations across media. Mother and child do not exist as physical realities so much as they exist according to their interrelationship. The meaning of the two "poles" or "selves" is in-relation, "coinherent" or rounded, such that "the history of the self is first of all a history of self-conveyance." While this is never more apparent than in the inter-uterine blood-exchange and sonic resonance, it is this condition of being-self that we've forgotten (and in forgetting it, we've lost the magic of transference). This is why Sloterdijk asks us to "Find a rooting in the existing duality": we started out in such a sensation-substance-welcoming-opening in the first place!
Thus, existence is medial. "The soul cannot be anything other than a studio for transactions with inspiring others" (p. 124). To be is to relate, to be space, to make room for, or to salute. (In parentheses, there is a great deal shared between Sloterdijk and Jean-Luc Nancy: to praise transference is not unlike the latter's "adoration," and for both men, greeting each other is our ultimate horizon.) Paired with the idea of the "a priori or strong" relationship, this idea is the St. Elmo's Fire of this book. Voila: being-in-relation is your being's ownmost being. It's a priori, in a sense, although we have forgotten it. It means, as Heidegger said: "Everyone is the other and no one is himself." But as Bataille says, being is communication: the birth and burst of being doubled up.
Here and there, to respond to what you hear is to come into existence. It's to experience happiness at inter-listening, filtering, pursuit, and finally, habitation-- such that listening, enjoying, intending and emerging are the same "thing": you. Here is your first devotion, which means: rousing yourself to the state of alertness necessary to open up to the sound that concerns you (pg. 504).
When we only exist vis-a-vis each other -- before either of us have a "vis" of our own -- we are each like a "third" that trembles between both of us- different from both of us, yet only bubbling because of the heat and the mixture. There's no absolute boiling pot, but a foam that sometimes bubbles over, on both micro and macro levels.
Reading "Bubbles," you yourself bubble up. The challenge of this reading is an existential challenge (perhaps reading ought to always be so). It calls you out into the open, beyond the personal "point" and into plural-transferential spheres: encounters, engagements, and encodings with/in externality, "outside." I want to emphasize that it is no mere combination of thoughts and techniques that led to the creation of this work. There is a mystic, ecstatic, communicative dimension to it that draws the reader out in to the open and creates an interior with/in them: a solidarity-bubble in transference. In other words, it asks that the bubble be broken and bubble infinitely -- that loneliness be refuted, and praise be to transference.
In the preface to the Spheres trilogy as a whole, Sloterdijk warns: "let no one enter who is unwilling to praise transference or to refute loneliness." A cogent presentation of this material ought to begin by unpacking this double inscription. Together, they indicate these two ontological tasks, both in terms of the position or whereabouts of the modern "individual": (1) Refute loneliness: Expose us to the dual or doubled-up nature of self, the plural aspect of being, or to a subjectivity that is resonant. From the discussion of the Greek genius to mesmerism; from Giotto's painting of inter-facial space to Magritte's tree of infinite recognition; from Odysseus and the Siren's Song to the idea that, "as soon as breath exists, there are two breathing," this primary dyad that we are forms the bubbling center of microsphereology. Sloterdijk does not revise our notion of the self; he exposes its premises, and reminds us that we begin shared. (2) Praise transference: Expose us to these spaces of resonance that constitute our being-wholly-in-relation, being as "in-relation." To praise transference is to praise the transferential nature of my being: I am only in transmission, I "am" transmission. I'm here so that sense can bounce and rebound off of me, in the infinite relating of shared truths, or the infinite creation of interiors. As Sloterdijk writes, "The limits of my capacity for transference are the limits of my world." In other words, the creation of a world and the sharing of the world are very similar. Ultimately, to praise transference simply means to make room for another (in me or outside me).
These two tasks are supported by countless intimacy-models (biological, therapeutic, theological, interfacial, poetic) that are weaved together chapter by chapter and across the trilogy, which show how the self/individual is preceded by "nobjective," resonance-based with- and in- relationships. Bubbles explores various spherical models that figure strong relationships of mutual intrication and coinherence. This "introduction to a medial poetics of existence" compiles histories, references, and revelations that have animated us since time immemorial. And you can tell that Sloterdijk himself loves what he recounts.
The most vital model of spheric resonance exists between mother and child, who are each "poles of a dynamic in-between." Drawing equally from Lao Tzu's birth-myth and Thomas Macho's research into the uterine-amniotic environment, Sloterdijk unveils the model of an original biune bubble that is ternary in structure: mother-child and their shared medium (blood, air, sonic space). One-and-two is always already three because, when each one is IN the other without exteriority, each one IS the dynamic in-between. Each one is its augmentation coming from elsewhere. Each one is the other's partner AND ALSO the medial bond between them. Each of them are themselves, the other, and the in-between medium as such: blood. Blood (like words) is the gift of relation before establishes a system of relations (mother-child, author-reader). Likewise, inter-uterine listening and filtering begins long before there is some "one" to listen. Mother and child are relational, dyadic, and dual because before they are themselves they are relations across media. Mother and child do not exist as physical realities so much as they exist according to their interrelationship. The meaning of the two "poles" or "selves" is in-relation, "coinherent" or rounded, such that "the history of the self is first of all a history of self-conveyance." While this is never more apparent than in the inter-uterine blood-exchange and sonic resonance, it is this condition of being-self that we've forgotten (and in forgetting it, we've lost the magic of transference). This is why Sloterdijk asks us to "Find a rooting in the existing duality": we started out in such a sensation-substance-welcoming-opening in the first place!
Thus, existence is medial. "The soul cannot be anything other than a studio for transactions with inspiring others" (p. 124). To be is to relate, to be space, to make room for, or to salute. (In parentheses, there is a great deal shared between Sloterdijk and Jean-Luc Nancy: to praise transference is not unlike the latter's "adoration," and for both men, greeting each other is our ultimate horizon.) Paired with the idea of the "a priori or strong" relationship, this idea is the St. Elmo's Fire of this book. Voila: being-in-relation is your being's ownmost being. It's a priori, in a sense, although we have forgotten it. It means, as Heidegger said: "Everyone is the other and no one is himself." But as Bataille says, being is communication: the birth and burst of being doubled up.
Here and there, to respond to what you hear is to come into existence. It's to experience happiness at inter-listening, filtering, pursuit, and finally, habitation-- such that listening, enjoying, intending and emerging are the same "thing": you. Here is your first devotion, which means: rousing yourself to the state of alertness necessary to open up to the sound that concerns you (pg. 504).
When we only exist vis-a-vis each other -- before either of us have a "vis" of our own -- we are each like a "third" that trembles between both of us- different from both of us, yet only bubbling because of the heat and the mixture. There's no absolute boiling pot, but a foam that sometimes bubbles over, on both micro and macro levels.
Reading "Bubbles," you yourself bubble up. The challenge of this reading is an existential challenge (perhaps reading ought to always be so). It calls you out into the open, beyond the personal "point" and into plural-transferential spheres: encounters, engagements, and encodings with/in externality, "outside." I want to emphasize that it is no mere combination of thoughts and techniques that led to the creation of this work. There is a mystic, ecstatic, communicative dimension to it that draws the reader out in to the open and creates an interior with/in them: a solidarity-bubble in transference. In other words, it asks that the bubble be broken and bubble infinitely -- that loneliness be refuted, and praise be to transference.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
By R. C. Kfouri
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you like Bachelard and phenomenology, art theory, attachment theory and archaeopsychology, but also want to be inspired by a new and elegant philosophical language then you won't be disappointed by this book. In fact I can't wait for the next volumes to appear ( english editions) . Surely there is (always) a lot of work to do from and beyond its ideas , and for the more scientific minded sometimes it will be probably hard to see "what is going on", but if you precisely want to be be lured into this philosophical womb then read it.
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