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When Experience Turns Critical: the Anarcheological Reduction as Methodological Device in Critical Phenomenology

Rasmus Dyring

Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology July 4, 2023 DOI: 10.1080/00071773.2023.2228352 (opens in new tab)

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AI-extracted from the abstract
Characteristics Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed
Topics Philosophy of mind
Key points Argues that "critical experience"—experience whose own structures subvert established orders—can be accessed through an "anarcheological reduction," a variant of the phenomenological reduction. Proposes the term "generative vector" to describe the singular, contingent trajectories along which this quasi-transcendental structuring occurs, and recommends the reduction as a methodological supplement to critical phenomenology.

Abstract

ABSTRACT Building on a phenomenological analysis of the Tunisian Revolution, this article puts forward the concept of critical experience as a type of experience in which the very experiential structures prove subversive of otherwise established orders (e.g. political, ethical, technological, epistemological etc.). In order to trace the anarchic, but generative impulses of such critical experience, the article develops a variation of the phenomenological reduction called an anarcheological reduction. In the anarcheological reduction, registers of critical experience are accessed in which the aforementioned anarchic impulses elicit a constitutive quasi-transcendental structuring of fields of possible experience. In order to describe the always singular, contingent trajectories along which such quasi-transcendental structuring takes place, the term generative vector is introduced. The article concludes by specifying how the quasi-transcendental registers accessed in the anarcheological reduction are different from other quasi-transcendental registers and accordingly suggesting this type of reduction as a valuable methodological supplement in critical phenomenology.

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