Metanoia: A Speculative Ontology of Language, Thinking, and the Brain - Fusing speculative realism, analytical and linguistic philosophy this book theorises the fundamental impact the experience of reading has on us

Metanoia: A Speculative Ontology of Language, Thinking, and the Brain, Ed. by Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.



Fusing speculative realism, analytical and linguistic philosophy this book theorises the fundamental impact the experience of reading has on us. In reading, language provides us with a world and meaning becomes perceptible. We can connect with another subjectivity, another place, another time. At its most extreme, reading changes our understanding of the world around us. Metanoia- meaning literally a change of mind or a conversion-refers to this kind of new way of seeing. To see the world in a new light is to accept that our thinking has been irrevocably transformed. How is that possible? And is it merely an intellectual process without any impact on the world outside our brains?

Innovatively tackling these questions, this book mobilizes discussions from linguistics, literary theory, philosophy of language, and cognitive science. It re-articulates linguistic consciousness by underlining the poetic, creative moment of language and sheds light on the ability of language to transform not only our thinking but the world around us as well.


Table of Contents:
Introduction by Levi Bryant

I Poetics
Principles of Ligual Poiesis
The Poetic Function of Language (Jakobson)
The Potentializing Function of Language (Guillaume)
Poietic Linguistics
The Myth of the Arbitrariness of the Sign
Speculative Poetics

II The Analytic Circle
The Ligual Creation of a True World
Triadic Logic of the Sign (Pierce)
The Poetic Triad
The Linguistic Turn, or: the Signified as Predicate of the Signifier
S means X by Y (Kripke, Meillassoux, Harman)
Lingual Things and the Ontology of Individuals (Strawson)

III Speculation
Aspects of a Poetics of Thought
The Speculative Triad
Subject – Object – Other: our Methodical Constellation
Abduction as a Poietic Procedure
Poeticizing Philosophy

IV Cognition
Metanoia is an Anagram of Anatomie173
The Recursive Structure of Cognition (Metzinger and Malabou)
The Coevolution of Language and the Brain
Aspects of Universal Grammar (Chomsky v. Leiss): Generative, Extra-linguistic, Cognitive
Semiotics of the Brain (Deacon)

Epilogue
The Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth!
Matters Ethical (and Religious)
Going Beyond Thought: Temporality




“How does reading texts actually alter our minds? This simple but important question is at the core of Metanoia. Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig's intricately argued intervention updates literary philosophy for the 21st century. Synthesizing linguistics, poetics and cutting-edge neurophilosophy, Metanoia powerfully vindicates the claim that literature can transform our consciousness.” –  Mark Fisher
                    
“'In the concept of metanoia Avanessian and Hennig discern a phenomenon that is far more pervasive than the religious register and its conversions, but that lies at the core of thought and language. There is a power of language, thought, and speech to transform both the subject and the world. How is it, Avanessian and Hennig wonder, that a book, a poem, a conversation, or a line of thinking can fundamentally transform both the subject and the world?'” –  Levi Bryant