Unselfing : : Global French Literature at the Limits of Consciousness / / Michaela Hulstyn.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• VerfasserIn: Hulstyn, Michaela,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: University of Toronto Romance Series
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (278 p.)

Altered states of consciousness – including experiences of deprivation, pain, hallucination, fear, desire, alienation, and spiritual transcendence – can transform the ordinary experience of selfhood. Unselfing explores the nature of disruptive self-experiences and the different shapes they have taken in literary writing. The book focuses on the tension between rival conceptions of unselfing as either a form of productive self-transcendence or a form of alienating self-loss. Michaela Hulstyn explores the shapes and meanings of unselfing through the framework of the global French literary world, encompassing texts by modernist figures in France and Belgium alongside writers from Algeria, Rwanda, and Morocco. Together these diverse texts prompt a re-evaluation of the consequences of the loss or the transcendence of the self. Through a series of close readings, Hulstyn offers a new account of the ethical questions raised by altered states and shows how philosophies of empathy can be tested against and often challenged by literary works. Drawing on cognitive science and phenomenology, Unselfing provides a new methodology for approaching texts that give shape to the fringes of conscious experience.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Towards a Cognitive-Phenomenological Approach to the Self -- 2. What Is Unselfing? -- 3. Unselfng as Disruption: Self-Knowledge and Pain in Paul Valéry and Charlotte Delbo -- 4. Unselfing as Mutation: Hallucination and the Remains in Henri Michaux and Yolande Mukagasana -- 5. Unselfing as Fragmentation: Languages of Alterity in Abdelkebir Khatibi and Hélène Cixous -- 6. Unselfing as Destruction: Decreation and Inner Experience in Simone Weil and Georges Bataille -- Epilogue: Unselfing and Coming Home -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index