Ideologies of Experience

Matthew H. Bowker is Visiting Assistant Professor of Liberal Arts at Medaille College in Buffalo, NY. His work applies psychoanalytic and literary-critical approaches to topics in political philosophy.

'In Ideologies of Experience, Matthew H. Bowker is onto an idea of profound significance. His concept of an ideology of experience may very well hold a key insight into the contemporary psychological processes behind our politics of fantasy over reality, and false attributions and assertions over valid information. Once we as individual selves are taught to mistrust our own capacity for reality testing and knowing good from bad, stripped of critical thinking we forfeit the essence of citizenship in a democratic society.' - Michael A. Diamond, Professor and Director, Center of the Study of Organizational Change, Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs, University of Missouri'A critical and provocative interdisciplinary inquiry into experience, and the ways it might be manipulated, Matthew H. Bowker challenges us to question basic assumptions we make about our society and our lives. Ideologies of Experience is a work from which all of us can profit.' - Stephen Eric Bronner, Board of Governors Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University'Bowker explores a fascinating array of ideas dealing with the self and the impact of what he calls ‘ideologies of experience’ on the self. This is a fascinating and stimulating excursion through philosophy and psychoanalytic theory that enriches our understanding of how the self relates to itself, to others, to the community and to the often difficult and traumatic ways experience attacks and engages the very foundations of our being.' - James M. Glass, Distinguished Scholar/Teacher and Professor, University of Maryland, College Park'In the aftermath of radical changes to traditional assumptions about subjectivity, and selfhood, this book offers a useful and original re-interpretation of key contested concepts—experience, ideology, trauma, solitude' - Marshall Alcorn, George Washington University, author of Changing the Subject in English Class'Presents a powerful challenge to the ideologies of experience it examines and makes a convincing case for their ubiquity and damage to the self. Anyone who cares about the self should take this book seriously.' – K. Pham, Contemporary Political Theory

• 1. Introduction 2. Experience, Failure, and Thinking 3. The Incorporation and Transmission of Traumatic Experience 4. Misunderstood and Repeated Experience in Le Malentendu 5. Experience and Control in Higher Education 6. Aloneness and its Opposites 7. Hikikomori: Deprived, Isolated, and Disfigured Selves 8. ‘Natural’ Experience and the State of Nature