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The Primordial Dance

Diametric and Concentric Spaces in the Unconscious World

by Paul Downes (Author)
©2013 Monographs XVI, 442 Pages

Summary

This book argues that a silent axis of the unconscious world rests largely undiscovered. It recasts foundational concepts in the psychology of Freud, Jung, Carol Gilligan and R.D. Laing, as well as in cognitive science, to highlight this hidden unconscious axis: primordial spaces of diametric and concentric structures. The author generates fresh approaches to understanding the philosophy of early Heidegger and Derrida, with the idea of cross-cultural diametric and concentric spaces fuelling a radical reinterpretation of early Heidegger’s transcendental project, and challenging a postmodern consensus that reduces truths and experiences to mere socially constructed playthings of culture.
The book, which also examines projected structures in modernist art, suggests a systematic refashioning of many Western assumptions, but it is more than a deconstruction. It also attempts to offer a new interplay between structures and meaning, as a spatial phenomenology. This significant expansion of the boundaries of human subjectivity opens alternative pathways for imagining what it means to be human, in order to challenge the reduction of experience to instrumental reason.

Details

Pages
XVI, 442
Year
2013
ISBN (PDF)
9783035303933
ISBN (Softcover)
9783034307604
DOI
10.3726/978-3-0353-0393-3
Language
English
Publication date
2012 (October)
Keywords
psychology cognitive science philosophy
Published
Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Wien, 2012. XVI, 442 pp., 6 b/w ill., 8 graphs

Biographical notes

Paul Downes (Author)

Paul Downes is Senior Lecturer in Psychology at St Patrick’s College, Dublin City University.

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Title: The Primordial Dance