Being and Space: Peter Sloterdijk’s ‘Bubbles’ and Beyond

In this seminar, we will devote ourselves to the first volume of Sloterdijk’s three-volume study of existential spatiality, a study he himself considered to be the missing part of Heidegger’s conception of “being-in-the-world.” For Sloterdijk, our disposition to create and inhabit various kinds of spheres begins in the womb and develops historically and culturally in seemingly infinite variations. Sloterdijk’s idiosyncratic phenomenology of “micro-spheres,” the project of the first volume and one that reveals the traces of an intimate alterity, generates a matrix for further thinking about enclosures, boundaries, community, immunity, intimacy, and ecstasy. Along the way, we will draw in material from other thinkers and artists to complement and challenge Sloterdijk’s work.

ANTH 45211 | GRMN 45211 | CCCT 45211