The Subject Reimagined: Language, Event, and the Event of Language

Abstract

In event phenomenology, the problem of subjectivity and its relation – or non-relation – to event remains a legitimate problem. A legitimate problem because, on the one hand, events are the definitional neuter, or nihil, that erupt into the something of being and subsequently reconfigure this being; while on the other, our experience of ourselves, what constitutes the bedrock of subjectivity, appears as cogent, unified. The purpose of this thesis is to propose a new sort of phenomenological language, carried through in a thoroughly ontological anthropology, that provides a way to connect discontinuity with continuity, the unfamiliar and alien with the familiar, inside subjectivity. Doing so requires abandoning the transcendental residue in Heidegger’s work, relying instead, and primarily, on Francoise Dastur’s ontogenetic analysis of language (and its event) to forge a path forward to an eventful subjectivity.