Metanoia: A Speculative Ontology of Language, Thinking, and the Brain - Hardcover

How does reading texts actually alter our minds? This simple but important question is at the core of Metanoia. Armen Avanessian and Anke Hennig's intricately argued intervention updates literary philosophy for the 21st century. Synthesizing linguistics, poetics and cutting-edge neurophilosophy, Metanoia powerfully vindicates the claim that literature can transform our consciousness.
Levi Bryant, Collin College, Fort-Worth, USA

'In the concept of metanoia Avanessian and Hennig discern a phenomenon that is far more pervasive than the religious register and its conversions, but that lies at the core of thought and language. There is a power of language, thought, and speech to transform both the subject and the world. How is it, Avanessian and Hennig wonder, that a book, a poem, a conversation, or a line of thinking can fundamentally transform both the subject and the world?'

Fusing speculative realism, analytical and linguistic philosophy this book theorises the fundamental impact the experience of reading has on us. In reading, language provides us with a world and meaning becomes perceptible. We can connect with another subjectivity, another place, another time. At its most extreme, reading changes our understanding of the world around us. Metanoia- meaning literally a change of mind or a conversion-refers to this kind of new way of seeing. To see the world in a new light is to accept that our thinking has been irrevocably transformed. How is that possible? And is it merely an intellectual process without any impact on the world outside our brains?

Innovatively tackling these questions, this book mobilizes discussions from linguistics, literary theory, philosophy of language, and cognitive science. It re-articulates linguistic consciousness by underlining the poetic, creative moment of language and sheds light on the ability of language to transform not only our thinking but the world around us as well.