Ideologies of Experience: Trauma, Failure, Deprivation, and the Abandonment of the Self

183 Pages·2016·1.71 MB·English

by  Matthew H. Bowker

In Ideologies of Experience, Matthew H. Bowker is onto an idea of profound sig-
nificance. His concept of an ideology of experience may very well hold a key
insight into the contemporary psychological processes behind our politics of fan-
tasy over reality,andfalse attributionsandassertionsover validinformation.Once
we as individual selves are taught to mistrust our own capacity for reality testing
and knowing good from bad, stripped of critical thinking we forfeit the essence
of citizenship in a democratic society.
Michael A. Diamond, Professor and Director, Center of the Study of Organizational
Change, Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri
A critical and provocative interdisciplinary inquiry into experience, and the ways
it might be manipulated, Matthew H. Bowker challenges us to question basic
assumptions we make about our society and our lives. Ideologies of Experience is a
work from which all of us can profit.
Stephen Eric Bronner, Board of Governors Professor of
Political Science, Rutgers University, USA
Bowker explores a fascinating array of ideas dealing with the self and the impact
of what he calls ‘ideologies of experience’ on the self. This is a fascinating and
stimulating excursion throughphilosophy andpsychoanalytic theorythat enriches
our understanding of how the self relates to itself, to others, to the community
and to the often difficult and traumatic ways experience attacks and engages the
very foundations of our being.
James M. Glass, Distinguished Scholar/Teacher and Professor,
University of Maryland, College Park, USA
In the aftermath of radical changes to traditional assumptions about subjectivity,
and selfhood,thisbookoffersausefulandoriginalre-interpretationofkeycontested
concepts—experience, ideology, trauma, solitude
Marshall Alcorn, George Washington University, USA, author of
Changing the Subject in English Class

IDEOLOGIES OF EXPERIENCE
Matthew H. Bowker offers a novel analysis of ‘experience’: the vast and influ-
ential concept that has shaped Western social theory and political practice for the
past half-millennium.
While it is difficult to find a branch of modern thought, science, industry, or
art that has not relied in some way on the notion of ‘experience’ in defining its
assumptions or aims, no study has yet applied a politically-conscious and psy-
chologically sensitive critique to the construct of experience. Doing so reveals
that most of the qualities that have been attributed to experience over the
centuries – particularly its unthinkability, its correspondence with suffering, and
its occlusionoftheself–arepartofunlikelyfantasiesorideologies.Byanalyzinga
seriesof related cases, including the experiential education movement, the ascen-
dency of trauma theory, the philosophy of the social contract, and the psycholo-
gical study of social isolation, the book builds a convincing case that ideologies of
experience are invoked not to keep us close to lived realities and ‘things-in-
themselves,’ but, rather, to distort and destroy true knowledge of ourselves and
others.
In spite of enduring admiration for those who may be called champions of
experience, such as Michel de Montaigne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others
treated throughout the work, ideologies of experience ultimately discourage
individuals and groups from creating, resisting, and changing our experience,
urging us instead to embrace trauma, failure, deprivation, and self-abandonment.
Matthew H. Bowker is Visiting Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Medaille
College in Buffalo, NY. His work applies psychoanalytic and literary-critical
approaches to topics in political philosophy.

IDEOLOGIES OF
EXPERIENCE
Trauma, Failure, Deprivation, and
the Abandonment of the Self
Matthew H. Bowker
Add Add Add
AddAddAdd
Add
AddAdd AdAddd
Firstpublished2016
byRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
andbyRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2016Taylor&Francis
TherightofMatthewH.Bowkertobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhas
beenassertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,
DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
publishers.
Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent
toinfringe.
LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData
Acatalogrecordforthisbookhasbeenrequested
ISBN:978-1-138-18267-7(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-18268-4(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-64626-8(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
For Julie and Zoe, my beloveds

CONTENTS
Acknowledgments x
1 Introduction 1
2 Experience, failure, and thinking 21
3 The incorporation and transmission of traumatic experience 44
4 Misunderstood and repeated experience in Le Malentendu 63
5 Experience and control in higher education 78
6 Aloneness and its opposites 103
7 Hikikomori: deprived, isolated, and disfigured selves 121
8 ‘Natural’ experience and the state of nature 144
Index 167