Performance Philosophy (Feb 2019)
The Feeling of Thinking: Stories and Animations on the Experience of Reading Theory
Abstract
In this set of stories I investigate in the experience of reading philosophical texts. Reading is one of the most central activities of engaging with philosophy. But how is it done? How is it perceived? Which aesthetic and emotional experiences take place? I conducted 50 confidential interviews with dedicated readers of theory / philosophy (students, professors, and others) on their personal reading practise and experience. Based on these interviews I am writing a series of stories. Some of the stories are true to their interviews, others take motifs of the interviews only as a starting point for investigating in reading. The stories explore in the embodied process of reading. They describe, why readers take on the task of reading philosophy, how they struggle to understand and how they deal with the authority of the authors. They also investigate in how reading influences the lives of the readers.
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