Volume 24, Issue 3, 2020
Ryan Wittingslow
Pages 282-305
Effing the Ineffable
The Sublime in Postphenomenology
Motivating this article is an interest in how postphenomenological technical relations participate in aesthetic experiences. Introducing aesthetic experience into our analyses of technical relations allows us to better tease apart the distinction between our relationship with the artefact, and how we experience that relationship. However, the sublime poses a unique set of complications for postphenomenologists. Thanks to the overwhelming qualities of the sublime, it is unclear where sublimity fits within the Ihdean relational taxonomy—or indeed, if it can at all, given that sublime experience would in principle overwhelm and dissolve the extant relation. This article resolves this apparent tension, and offers an accounts of how sublime experience is able to be reconciled with Ihdean postphenomenology.