»Where I forget myself, consent will do.« Dizziness as metaphysical challenge and creative resource
03/11/2018
Lecture by Sarah Kolb
Within the symposium As Much About Forgetting, Viborg Kunsthal, DK
Even if the history of civilization has brought forth countless philosophers and artists who knew how to use dizziness as a creative resource and as an instrument of emancipation, only few knew to use it so effectively and push it to its limits on a theoretical level as the French sociologist, philosopher and writer Roger Caillois. In his autobiographical work The River Alpheus, in search of his own »true sources« he refers to the »delightful or devastating raptures« of vertigo, which he experienced for the first time in his childhood while climbing a pylon and which he would later explore also in on a metaphysical level, as he had realized it had the capacity to unsettle not only the bodily organs, but also consciousness. Caillois refers to this experience of dizziness in many of his writings, from his visionary essays on »The praying mantis« and »Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia«, via his seminal study Man, Play and Games, through to his late meditations on Stones. With dizziness, Caillois namely addresses a special kind of »dangerous luxury«, causing the individual to cross the boundaries of its senses and blurring distinctions between the real and imaginary, between wakefulness or sleep, or between ignorance and knowledge« due to a veritable »lure of material space«. From this perspective, dizziness can be seen as an effective tool to transcend the rigid boundaries of self-awareness and to plunge into the deep reality of becoming.