“Gendlin’s philosophy of experiencing refutes the view that nothing new ever emerges by showing the connection between language and the body (Perl 57).”
While I’m really excited about the idea of using felt sense as a compositional tool, I want to resist the urge that many of us (myself included) have to try to find a “way out” of so-called postmodernist traps that leave us already written. I find that this just sets up a false binary between postmodernism and “everything else more positive” and misunderstands a several concepts put forth by key theorists. I don’t think there’s necessarily a denial of the body, of the outside world, or of referents in general – but rather of the re-presentations of referents within a already-created system of meaning-making (language), where meanings cannot be fixed. Does this automatically negate felt experience? I’m not so sure.
I’m not questioning the validity of felt-sense as a concept and process (as wellas and individual experience) as much as I am questioning its odds with concepts/processes like discourse. Can we imagine both concepts and processes happening at the same time? This might be possible.
